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I N T R O D U C T I O N p a g e 2
Peter's father and uncles started working in their youth
at their father's small, New York produce market. They went on to build
a profitable corporation that owns large citrus groves in Florida. Peter's
father would tell him, "Sometimes we'd get to work at four in the
morning." Because Peter never had to work like that, he romanticized
what his dad and uncles had done. In his mind's eye, he saw them going
to work at four and building their business.
Peter's father wanted him to join the business, and he
went through the motions: first, an MBA, then a move to Florida to work
at company headquarters. He tried to meet his father's expectations,
but it didn't work. "I didn't know what to do with my life. After
business school I felt like I didn't have any initiative or will of
my own. I just lay around feeling depressed and alienated. I was in
jellyfish mode. I saw plenty of therapists, because I felt inadequate.
I felt like nothing I did counted, because everything I could do was
measured against this mega-family-business success, which somehow reduced,
in my mind, any accomplishment that I might make."
One day, after drifting for several years, Peter went
for a helicopter ride above New York City. "It was an astounding
experience, and as soon as we landed, I told the pilot, 'I have to learn
how to fly helicopters.' Flying was like taking a drug: I got high on
the pleasure, the speed, and the feeling of freedom."
For a year, Peter was happy training as a pilot: "It
was like being in a private flying saucer. But then, somehow, the thrill
started to go away. And I knew that either I would have to go forward
for my commercial license, or say, 'What am I beating my brains out
for?'" He chose the latter.
Peter experiences his life as anomie, which he describes
as "a state of normlessness that people get into when they're not
tapped into a value system. They're free-floating. And that free-floating
feeling is terrible. It's like you don't have a meaning. You don't have
a group; you're isolated."
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