I read Malcolm X's autobiography at about twelve and Lee Iacocca's autobiography at around eight. (You know how it is with childhood; you read what's around you.) This past weekend I dipped back into the X, and realized something they have in common: both of them get fired from the number two jobs at their respective organizations.

In their stories, as they tell them:

X converts to Islam in prison and from that point onwards devotes his total loyalty to the Nation of Islam. Iacocca starts working for the Ford Motor Company right after getting his degree. Both rise through the ranks till they're reporting directly to the heads of their orgs, and they live and breathe their orgs' missions.

And then something goes rotten. The top guy in each org is insecure, flawed, can't deal with having such a charismatic, effective, headline-grabbing guy as his direct subordinate. So he gives our protagonist the runaround, then fires him. And our protagonist undergoes the most severe emotional and even physical confusion of his life, reeling from the betrayal.

What next? After Ford fires him, Iacocca goes on to head bankruptcy-bound Chrysler and help turn it around. X founds new organizations, takes the hajj, changes his views. (And assassins kill him a year later.)

Of course Iacocca's and X's self-serving biases skew these narratives. But I still got something interesting out of this repetition, I think, related to what I got out of John Morearty's mentorship -- a belief that, contrary to that old quote, there can be second acts in American lives. That you might rise and fall and rise again.

And that you should be hesitant to love anything that can't love you back -- and institutions can't love you back.