Silver spoons and scrappers: nobody is only one of them

There are exactly two types of people.

There's one TED talk I keep coming back to. It's about the silver spoon and the scrapper. Every time it comes back to me, it lands differently on my own experience. The original split goes like this:

Silver spoon. The people whose life started out a bit smoother. More support, less chaos. A loving family, good school, university. The world around them made sense, and if you worked hard, things actually worked out. These people grow up inside a feeling of predictability: there's structure, there are rules, there's a logic you can trust.

Scrapper. The people who had to take the crooked road. Somewhere the family was unstable, somewhere the resources were thin, somewhere circumstances were simply bigger than them. And it doesn't really matter what exactly happened. What matters is that the path didn't look "correct". But it's precisely out of those bumps that you get the ability to endure, to recover, to try again. To keep fighting no matter what and come out stronger.

And the point of the talk is simple, but very warm:

Both types are fine! They just move along their trajectory differently: silver spoon people carry a habit of order and precision. They know what an inclusive environment looks like, and they know how to recreate one around themselves. Scrapper people carry flexibility, inner strength, and the ability to keep living and moving when the plan fell apart a long time ago.

And with that thought it gets easier to look at yourself and at other people. Not to compare your crooked trajectory with someone else's. Not to romanticize somebody's "perfect path". And not to be embarrassed by your own experience, even if it looks bumpier and more uneven than everyone else's.