There’s a subtext throughout Montaigne’s essays, made more complicated by his belief that customs should rule us rather than laws, and it goes something like this: there’s a power structure in the world and we have no choice but to obey it, but that doesn’t mean anyone is better than anyone else.

This is the first essay where some of those issues are brought to light, with Montaigne gently mocking customs about how higher-ranking people should be greeted. His complicated position amounts to saying that these well-established customs are ridiculous, and he chooses not to follow them, but that’s just Montaigne being Montaigne, there’s no need to universally change behavior.

Of course, by example, Montaigne is saying that you have more power to ignore these hierarchy-reinforcing cultural rules than you think and if they seem silly to you, here’s my example, you might be fine.

I have a complicated history with power relationships. I was raised by parents who, at a surprisingly early age for me, seemed to conclude that I was smarter than them, so they didn’t need to educate me about the world. I think they somehow believed this would be empowering for me, but more often it was terrifying — I was left to my own devices to figure out why the world was so scary … such as why there were nuclear weapons and why people talk so much about this thing I didn’t understand called sex.

It was the 1970s, after all, and people who didn’t live through that age would be shocked at how sexualized the culture was at that time — and no effort at all was made to shield children from it. But I don’t want to dive too deeply into that subject now. It was just one example of the big, scary complicated world that needed adult guidance, if not supervision, and I grew up with very little of it.

This has affected my adult life in interesting ways. For one, I don’t tend to rebel against people with power and authority, I actually feel unusually comfortable around them. This is a highly beneficial attitude for a speechwriter — I tend to approach my clients as if they were peers in some sense.

On the other hand, I tend to have complete disrespect for formal authority structures in organizations. I thoroughly disbelieve that the vast majority of middle managers I’ve worked with in my career are better than me in any way, and just because someone outranks me does not convince me that I should cower to their edicts if I disagree.

Top leaders, especially when they are competent and have clear ideas, I tend to view as the parents I wish I had, while people who’ve climbed the ladder mostly by going with the flow seem too much like the parents I actually had.

These aren’t across-the-board rules, by the way, and they probably applied more to jobs earlier in my career than the one I hold now. But the important point is that my family dynamics made a lasting impression on how I relate to power, and given the way Montaigne describes his own childhood, he very likely was influenced in a similar way.

All of which raises an interesting point — given our personal histories, and the similar attitudes we’ve formed, do Montaigne and I actually believe in equality, or deep down do we think we’re mostly better than everyone else? Everyone in the Michel’s household was required to address him only in Latin, for example, and he was made to live with peasants for long stretches to enhance his moral education. I was not subjected to such extreme exceptionalism, but my parents missed no opportunity to point out how I was different from them, and by inference, most other people.

It’s an uncomfortable question for me to ask myself, because at my age, I have no illusions about my actual intelligence and other personal traits. The interesting thing about being raised to believe in your uniqueness is that it cuts both ways — failure to live up to impossible expectations reinforces painful differences that make me wish I had a more ordinary life path.

By now, I think I’ve learned to appreciate life on my own curve and not measure it against others’ expectations or evaluations. But, oddly enough, that too is somewhat alienating — I have to live by my own rules and ignore standard social benchmarks to be most at peace.

Which brings us full circle back to Montaigne, refusing to follow the rule that you shouldn’t greet a visitor by going out and meeting them, paying no heed to the expectation that lower ranked people should arrive at a rendezvous first. Michel had no choice but to create his own rules for life, separate from what he thought best for the culture at large.

I found my way to Montaigne for a reason.