He fell silent. So did I. I heard the crunch of fallen leaves and the happiest barks of unleashed dogs in a nearby dog run. Slowly, quietly, Josh asked, “You would give up hundreds of millions of dollars for the freedom to do your own thing?”

I looked across the street at a neighborhood deli and thought of my parents. The first thing I remember telling myself I wanted to be when I grew up was “the opposite of my mom.” I had been so intent on defining myself as the antipode of her that I failed to see how that mindset shortened the umbilical cord I had tried to cut loose. She yelled; I would be calm. She judged; I would be tolerant. She saw danger; I would know no fear. She changed her mind randomly; I would be so consistent and logical and rational—and thus, unchanging, because how do you reason and decide your way into insight, revelation, becoming a whole new person?—that I would drive myself into paradoxical corners from which I saw no escape.