I am strong, smart, and successful.

Plenty of people are running hard at a finish line their father drew in 1987. It's a respectable line — legible at family gatherings, easy to explain to strangers — and it may have nothing to do with them.

The exhaustion of chasing someone else's target is a specific exhaustion, and it doesn't respond to working harder. It responds only to being noticed.

Worth asking once, plainly: if nobody ever found out, what would count as a good life? The answer tends to come back smaller and more particular than the inherited version, and a good deal closer than it looks.