Actually thinking, I mean really thinking about something, stirs the mind. It reminds me of cleaning cobwebs that form in the dark corners of my house – each cobweb you wipe away brightens the corner in which it once resided. Yes, focusing the mind on a single thought brightens and clarifies …
So, when I was sitting there in that cove at the beach, I was clear, as I am clear now writing this. I now understand why I do what I do with my money, and as I said on Friday, my “now” understanding is different from my “then” understanding, and, as trite as it might seem, the action of a simple wave opened the door for me to learn something important about myself.
For the last two years, I have experienced angst about trading, the economy, the market, and the financial world, the world of big banks, big traders, and big money. Since the fall of 2008, the financial world has revealed information that I never knew, or knew about but did not completely understand. Much of that new understanding is disconcerting, to say the least; yet, while disconcerting, my new understanding is also liberating. I feel free to analyze, critique, and suggest possibilities in public about all facets of the financial world. And this column is my forum to do exactly that. This column has forced me to “kick it up a notch.” This column has made me learn, and this brings me to the reason I do what I do …
Yes, I have learned much in these last two years, and my clarity in general provides a frame around the specific things I have learned. Some large percentage of what I have learned is about the financial world, the economy, the markets, and everything in between, and I have to tell you, I am different because of what I have learned – I am smarter. This then is the essence of the reason I “trade,” but it is not the reason.
Like the wave that builds far out at sea, gathers energy, crests, breaks, foams, and then ends in a reach to touch the furthest point possible, I do the same. Like that wave, my whole life is about reaching out as far as I can to gather what energy I can along the way. For me, though, unlike the wave that gathers energy in the form of water, I gather energy in the form of knowledge. Yes, like the wave again, the energy we both gather is transformative. In our journey of going wherever it is that we go, we change; we become different.
Watching a wave do what it does provided the answer to the reader’s question. In the end, making my money work for me and taking on risk to do so is what I do, but the why of that action, like the wave, is simplicity itself – we both do what our nature dictates. Gathering knowledge about all things that affect my money is part of who I am. This action has taught me to make better choices, both financially and in life, and making better choices is a life skill, an important part of the altering, transformative process we all pass through. Understanding this has made me better at the more important endeavor in my life, which is to become the best human being I can be. With clarity, I now fully understand the tagline below.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
