The Third Base Effect

Were you born on third base? Did you have everything you needed to successfully make it to home base as an adult and thrive, with a full menu of options for guidance, support, financial means, access to networks of people to easily find your way?

Or were you born in the dugout, watching from the stands, or maybe even outside the stadium struggling to get in the game and make it?

What I mean by this is, were you lucky enough to be born to a family that had the resources to provide for you in a way that you didn’t have to worry about too much so you can make it in this world successfully?

This means:

Your family had wealth and were able to give you every advantage they could to succeed.

Those that raised you were able to give you mentorship and guidance, and maybe easy access to college education because you were able to get admitted to the university your parents went to as a legacy student, or the financial means to get an education without taking on debt?

You weren’t raised by a single parent or parents that had to work multiple jobs, juggling childcare, always stressed, trying to make ends meet leaving less space to give you all possibilities and opportunities?

Did you grow up knowing what opportunities were available to you? That learning to code and become a software developer or know that if you wanted to, you could become a doctor, or anything you wanted?

Or did you have all the social capital to get to where you needed successfully, meaning, you grew up with connections to people who could introduce you to jobs, making it easy for you to be part of the statistic 80% of jobs are secured through networking?

Most of us didn’t have this. And it’s OK. I wish that every single human on this planet was born on third base, and had all the guidance, mentorship, and resources to make it in this world, be a success, and live a good life. Many of us had parents that have always done their best, but weren’t in a position to give us all of this, and would have if they could, or learned themselves how to have all of this.

But this is why we need to have more compassion so more and more people can grow up with the opportunities to thrive. This is also why we need Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, DEI.

A few weeks ago, I was watching a show, I think it was NBC’s Paradise (which I do recommend) and a character said the phrase,

“Most of us weren’t born on third base.”

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve talked to friends and coaching colleagues about it. In my never-ending struggle to have the words to talk to people about why there’s been a disadvantage for many of us out there and why we need to look at education, hiring practices, onboarding processes, and more in a way that honors the fact that some of us that aren’t as polished in these spaces and were always, always playing catch up. There’s so much that some of us don’t know, didn’t know, and we’re also just trying our best to survive, to succeed, to thrive, to flourish.

And I strongly feel there is such a difference in the time and space one has to thrive when they don’t have to work so hard to survive a life that had more obstacles than others.

And if you weren’t born on third base, what variables and factors did you have that pushed you further and further away from it? Maybe 1st or 2nd base, maybe the dugout, the stands, or watching the game from a TV outside the stadium in another town.

Many have taken on crushing debt by going to college, because that’s what was expected. But the education and working hard isn’t always enough. Nobody taught us to navigate the workforce after we earned that shiny degree. And then the layoffs these days…stability from a college degree is not a thing these days sadly.

Many of us didn’t go to college because we didn’t have the money or had no idea how to even get started. This may have lead to lack of opportunity or then reading job reqs that say a college degree is required. (and even if the college degree is required, it pays so low, you don’t even know where to start paying the loan back after you satisfy your cost of living needs)

Then there’s other factors like:

• Are you neurotypical or neurospicy, meaning, do you have ADHD, autism, trauma, or some other factor that makes it difficult to navigate spaces and interviews that never took or takes this into account in their ecosystems?

• What if you aren’t white? Did the institutions like schools, universities, and places of work make you grow up faster, work harder, take up so much mental space trying to always show up as you felt you needed to so that you were included and could keep moving forward?

• What were your parents like? Were they available to you? Or did they struggle with substance abuse or other behaviors that made you stress more than a child needs to, taking away the space to be a kid, dream, and give you good attachments?

• If we are talking about living and working in the United States, did your family just move here from another country, and you don’t have an Americanized name, or English wasn’t your first language, and people overlooked your resume or weren’t patient with you as you learned to become more “Americanized.” (or even if you are a woman this happens)

• Were you a girl who wasn’t told she can do things like math and science and go into STEM careers?

• Did you grow up in a rural area, or a poor school district, without access to opportunities that someone in a big city has?

• Maybe you are a Veteran that served your country and integrating into civilian life has been trying?

• Maybe you are in a same sex relationship or live outside of what some people in our society deem unacceptable.

• And there’s so much more intersection here from the quality of education in areas that are not wealthy, urban, and so, so much more.

Regardless of where you fall in this analogy, or what privileges or lack of them you have, it’s not your fault.

However, this is why there are people, like me, who care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s to advocate and create space for everyone who wasn’t born on third base, and honestly even for those that were. It’s valuing every human life, and creating better places for EVERYONE to thrive. We need everyone, every background, every unique experience to build better teams, products, services, communities.

This is why there are people out there to take the time to consider how business in America are constructed, what workplace culture looks like, what kind of hiring practices make sense so that the people born on third base, that likely have more confidence and were empowered to advocate for themselves better, or shown how to navigate networking and interview practices, better, aren’t the only ones who get the jobs.

And when I say work place culture, I mean making work a place where the best work is done, people are connected to their purpose within, the organizations are taking care of the communities they serve and work for them, and the outcome if the company thrives in it’s financial and sales goals WHILE employees are doing their best work and feeling appreciated, trusted, and enabled to be full humans with a life outside of work they can tend to.

It is heart-wrenching to me that there is such a move to exclude people, to pull the names of humans out of history because they identify as a woman or black, and, and, and and, it goes on and and to have absolute disregard for human life.

Who wants to live and work like this? I sure don’t.

Does our country need more efficiencies and operate and care for it’s citizens better? My answer is absolutely. But is the answer what’s currently happening in the current administration? I strongly feel it isn’t. Many of the people that are throwing money at the administration or running it were born with all the privileges of being born on third base, and to me, they do not care about the well-being of any of us that occupy middle America. They will never know what it means to live pay check to pacy check, or to fight like hell to survive, thrive, and flourish.

From my seat, as a white girl who grew up in an old coal mining town as a first generation college kid and business professional, raising myself in many ways, and doing the best I could with parents who were, and still are, severe alcoholics, I see why and maybe can relate to why so many people are hurting.

I have never had anywhere to fail to, and have spent almost my entire life doing and people pleasing to make something of myself. And it worked, until it didn’t, and I’ve been working on healing that. But also, along the way, I was awarded so many privileges by looking the way I do as a straight, white woman who just kinda blends in everywhere I go with teachers who took to me well, and never having to think twice about going into pretty much any space because my safety or well-being would most likely not be compromised.

Can you imagine for one second what it must feel like inside someone’s body, how the stress in their body has affected their overall well being because they have to worry so much about how people in different spaces will treat them?

I say this not for pity, but these are the intersections I have been navigating, and I have had to put so much of my mental energy on all of this, without a lot of luxury to just be, dream, be able to fail knowing I have a safety net to fall back on. I reflect on this and salivate to think about what things I could have done a little bit better if I knew differently, or had access to mentorship, someone who modeled navigating this world well, etc.

What base was I born on? Maybe at bat or the dugout. Maybe further from playing being on deck. Maybe it doesn’t really matter where I was born, but more importantly, how can we enable a world where we work together to make it a better place, in businesses and communities, for EVERY HUMAN.

But all of this is to say, there are so few people that are actually born on third base with the right elements to bring it home without too much effort. And those who have worked, and studied, and poured their heart and soul into their work, professions, or crafts, and thrived, they likely worked harder than most to get there, especially if they have more melanin in their skin then me. They earned every position, promotion, accolade, and more.

Whether you’re blue collar or white collar, live in or support the left or the right, or somewhere in the middle, or whatever your intersections are, we are all human, we are all part of this ecosystem together, and if all of us took some time to get to know the journey of someone who is different than the places we exist in, you might learn you have so much in common in this wildly beautiful and terribly hard life.

If I had a wish, it would be for people of all walks of life to come together and find the commonalities we all have instead of being more and more polarized and distant day by day.

What base were you born on? And how can we find compassion and balance for all?

Because I will not subscribe to not valuing all human life and I will always, always work to make spaces I live, work, and exist in more inclusive.

To me, demonizing DEI is a dangerous and slippery slope that really just further enables people who were always going to succeed to continue to do so while making it harder and harder to enable ways that all of us can thrive regardless of our intersections; where we were born, what we look like, what gender we are, if we are neurodiverse or able bodied or not, and so much more.

I want to live in a world where we are all in balance with each other.