The word capable carries an implication that doesn’t always surface but is almost always present: that the capable person doesn’t need things. That capability is a kind of self-sufficiency. That someone who manages well has, by managing well, demonstrated that they’re fine.
But capability is a method, not a state. It’s a way of handling things, not evidence that things don’t need handling. When I bought my house and organized the down payment and navigated the mortgage process and dealt with all the ordinary complexity of that, what I was demonstrating was: I can figure out complex processes and execute them. What I was not demonstrating was: I have unlimited resources and can absorb additional demands without cost.
The conflation of those two things — being good at handling things with having limitless capacity to handle things — is where the assumption came from. My parents saw me navigate complexity and concluded that adding more complexity was not a big deal. They saw me manage and concluded that managing was something I did without friction, without cost, without limits.
The truth: I manage because I have to, and I’m good at it because I’ve had a lot of practice at managing things without help, and the practice has been partly the result of not being offered help the way Adam was. I’m capable because I had to be. The capability did not mean I had infinite bandwidth.
This is not a complaint about Adam, who did not create the family dynamic, or even a complaint about my parents, who were doing what they knew how to do from the models they had. It’s just an accurate description of the thing that was being mistaken.