I never did meet Regal Jones, Jr., but yes, I knew him. Born during the First World War, Regal Jones, Jr. was named after his father. He in turn named his son after himself. The family was not known for originality. It was in the son, the third Regal Jones, that I knew the father. For my friend Regal Jones, III, no matter what the calendar said, it was always 1938.

Abject fear took hold of the father during the Great Depression. He passed it on to the son. The father was a man of little talent and no vision. The son is a man of astonishing talent and towering vision. The problem was that he was living the life of the father. And by the script he lived, if you lost your job or took any risk, you'd be out on the street and no one could save you then.

Regal's mother gave him both his imagination and his limits. It was she who sang to the boy, who encouraged him to speak and be creative. But it was also she who quietly and without protest transmitted the father's values to the son. In families, the quiet but stern father who transmits values through an articulate but submissive mother can be a powerful binding force.

Regal was forty-two years old before he snapped out of it. He was an executive in the insurance industry, just like his father had been. At times he even told me he liked insurance. But his eyes would dart when he said that. Who was he kidding?

Regal is married to a woman almost ten years older than he. She is an established executive. They have no children. And yet Regal could not make the career move he really wanted to make. It wasn't even anything exotic, just a venture into some international insurance ventures instead of working for the big company as his long-dead father had. And this successful man not only had a track record in the field, he could absolutely have afforded to lose his entire investment.

It wasn't as if he ever discussed his plans or ideas with his aged mother. It wasn't as if she'd told him, “Don't take the risk.” His mother's mere presence in his life was sufficient to freeze Regal in his tracks. And it is no coincidence that it wasn't until she died that Regal moved his career to another level.

“I used to worry about what people in my old neighborhood would tell my mother if I failed in the business,” he told me very soon afterward. “You know, old women who had known my father. My father kept that job through the whole depression and he was damn proud of it. And I was always proud of him.”

Regal hadn't been the rebellious type when we were in school, but something happened that left him burned and afraid ever again to disappoint his father. After surviving the depression, Regal's father survived World War Two, then went back into the insurance industry. As Regal grew up during the Cold War era of the fifties and sixties, he was, through his father's example, expected to serve his country in the same way. Regal turned draft age in 1968, the worst year of the Vietnam War. No, Regal wasn't a draft evader or conscientious objector. The government had a draft lottery the next year, picking birthdays at random; the later they picked your birthday, the less likely it was that you'd be drafted. Regal's birthday was chosen near last. I was with him when we heard the numbers on the radio. I remember the look of glee on his face and the frown on his father's face that evening at dinner. That look of glee was the crime in the face of the hard man who'd sired Regal. Words did not have to be uttered. I doubt if this formal, uncompromising man would have wanted his son to sink dead into a bloody Asian swamp, but the son's look was a dishonor to the tradition both father and son were supposed to cherish and uphold.

There was no contradicting the silent father after that, not until his voice, Regal's mother, was also gone.

The family is the basic biological unit through which humans reproduce themselves. Family roots reach deep and hold tenaciously. Parents speak without words, even after they are dead. There is an ironic flip side to the Regal story. When I returned, somewhat grim, from Regal's house that evening, my own parents could not contain their joy at my own favorable results in the lottery. All of us were deeply against the war. “So somebody else has to go in my place,” I said, leaving them in the living room and shutting myself in my room for the evening.

That was my own Shock, fortunately accomplished twenty-five years before Regal's. I got a lot from my parents and Regal got a lot from his, but sooner or later every person of quality has to question the premises he or she brings into adulthood. You inherit more than the shape of your nose from your parents. You inherit prejudices, beliefs, and solutions for the problems and possibilities that applied to your parents' lives. They almost never apply to your own life, no matter how wonderful your parents were.

Of course, you don't have to cut ties with your parents or be involved in any acrimony with them just to live your own life. You don't have to waste your time being a rebel. Your parents may be dead or maybe they've even mellowed out with age. It may well be that they didn't even mean to put static limiting notions into your head in the first place. When a child hears a chance remark by a parent, made during a very receptive time in the child's life, that remark may form a thinking box the child never climbs out of. The key is that you can be rooted down by notions, prejudices and fixed methods of thinking that begin during your childhood, and it's your responsibility to yourself to cut those roots and walk with your own legs.

One of our strongest ties to the static, biological sides of our nature is family, second perhaps only to our need to breathe, eat drink and shelter ourselves from the elements. There is a convenient phrase that refers to your inevitable breaking away from the pull of your family. It's called “growing up,” and it can be done at any age. While the separation often hurts, the failure to separate kills.

Exercise: Freeing Yourself From Your Family

Every person has highly individual ties with his or her family. In this exercise, your task is to identify the positive, healthy ties—the real love you share—and also identify the damaging and negative ties—the guilt, shame, obligation, automatic reaction and agenda-setting prevalent in most families.

• Zero in on one area of your life outside your family where your family seems to stand in the background, hamper your actions and subvert your happiness. Two prime examples involve your choice of profession or choice of love partner, but there are many other possibilities.

• Once you've found a representative “hampering” example, play out better scenarios in your mind, either as to your present life or things you did and attitudes you held in the past.

• Replay as many scenarios as you need to.

• Push your prime scenario into reality. Plan that the next time you are in “x” situation, you will do “y” and not “z.”