The events of the year had prompted me to question this outlook. I saw that, despite all that Papa had accomplished and how intelligent he was, happiness and peace were strangers to my father, and that same drive for achievement had nearly killed my brother. I needed to prove to myself that I was capable of living beyond Papa’s shadow and that happiness was achievable some other way—or at least that it was possible to live without feeling this horrible all the time. I was miserable at my successful job and did not see anything particularly extraordinary about the work I did, only that we
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