When I was at American University Washington College of Law, the dean at the time was a man named Claudio Grossman. He was from Chile and seemed to carry that fact around like a passport that needed stamping at every conversation. His favorite word was paradigm. He used it constantly\u2014so much, in fact, that I often wondered if he truly understood what it meant. It was like a magician pulling the same rabbit out of the same hat over and over again, insisting it was a new trick each time. In lectures, meetings, hallway conversations\u2014\u201cparadigm\u201d this, \u201cparadigm\u201d that. Eventually, the word lost all meaning. It became noise. A kind of academic Muzak that played in the background while students like me tried to focus on surviving law school.<\/p>\n
But lately, and especially in reflecting on Full Circle, I\u2019ve come to understand that paradigm was always the right word\u2014just misused, misapplied, and, in Grossman\u2019s case, misplaced.<\/p>\n
You see, my life has been defined by resisting paradigms. Not society\u2019s, but my parents\u2019. Their paradigm of what a child should be. What I should have been. And more importantly, what I should have done for them.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t the son they ordered from a catalog. I didn\u2019t go to Harvard. I didn\u2019t write perfect essays in high school, or chase after the Ivy League dream they wore like a badge. I didn\u2019t win the medals they could hang in their mental trophy case and polish at dinner parties. I didn\u2019t become their reflection.<\/p>\n
Instead, I built something from the ground up. My practice. My integrity. My independence. No silver spoon, no handouts, no shortcuts\u2014just sweat, stubbornness, and survival. I took the long way, because that\u2019s the only road I had. And in doing that, I broke their paradigm. Or maybe I just refused to live inside it.<\/p>\n
My parents were broken people. Narcissistic to the core. Everything I achieved had to be theirs. Everything I failed at was entirely mine. Their love\u2014if you can call it that\u2014was transactional, conditional, and forever out of reach. I spent years in that loop, trying to decode their expectations, trying to earn their approval by shaping myself into someone else\u2019s ideal. But the more I tried, the further I drifted from who I actually was. Until one day, I stopped trying. I let go of the idea that I had to fit their image. That I had to play a role in their performance.<\/p>\n
That was the beginning of the real paradigm shift. Not in a lecture hall. Not from a dean\u2019s monologue. But in the quiet, painful realization that I could not\u2014and would not\u2014spend my life being a character in someone else\u2019s script.<\/p>\n
The funny thing is, Claudio Grossman probably thought he was introducing us to a revolutionary concept when he said paradigm. But for me, the revolution was personal. It was walking away from a broken inheritance. It was building a life that didn\u2019t need their approval. It was writing Full Circle\u2014not just as a memoir, but as a declaration.<\/p>\n
I was not their paradigm. I never will be. And that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n
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