All my life, I’ve been trying to work out who I am. Perhaps not surprisingly, I had my first existential crisis at age eight (or thereabouts) at my grandmother’s house in Boston. I don’t remember what precipitated it – a dream, perhaps – but I do recall bolting upright in bed, wondering why I was put on this earth, what the hell I was going to do with my life and how I would know which path was the right one.

Yeah, I was a real buzzkill. 

Over the years, I was drawn to philosophy, feeling ...