“What if you’re wrong, Evil? What if Dandridge is a vampire and he thinks you know it? Would you walk down that alley then?” – Fright Night
How many vampires are good at math? Can I count Dracula?
“Indeed, none but the Deity can tell what is good luck and what is bad before the returns are all in,” wrote Mark Twain.
Yet, so many people are certain that they can determine what good luck is with great certainty. As I get older, like Twain, I’m not sure that I can tell good luck from bad on any given day. So, I try to take it as it is. Rain? Good. We needed rain. Hot? Well, the air conditioning works. Snow? Great – it will kill the insects. A massive hail of arrows that blots out the Sun? Excellent. We can fight in the shade.
I came to this conclusion after one day when I looked backward at my life around the age of 32 – the things that I had hoped for – recognition, money, and a bountiful supply of PEZ® hadn’t made life better. The things I had tried to avoid – a near zero bank account, 16+ hour days as a single dad with a job, and life without a spouse made me a better man and made me think about the relationships between virtue, money, and meaning.
The time of plenty hadn’t made me better, but the time where I spent six months raising kids by myself before I had a spare $150 to buy a used Fender® and an amp at a pawn shop had. Huh? How could that be, especially when I got cheated on the guitar – “no strings attached” had a different meaning in that pawn shop.
I gave up and sold the guitar to a guy in town who doesn’t have any arms. I asked how he was going to play it, and he said, “By ear.”
It was then I decided that getting everything I wanted would have been the worst possible thing for me. Instead, getting a tougher life made me better. I was in my 20s when I had that revelation, and it has stayed with me. It also has led me to always ask myself:
What if I’m wrong?
Not wrong. But really, really wrong?
In some sense, people might call this indecision, like I don’t know what I want. I mean, indecision was when I couldn’t decide between churros and sopapillas for desert, which caught me off guard – no one expects Spanish Indecision. But this is different. I call this humility. I might have a clear sense of what I want, but have no real idea what is good for me. Call it the Twain Zone.
It leads to some interesting thought experiments – what if the exact opposite of what I’m expecting happens?
Historically, I can give numerous examples of surprises that “no one” was expecting – where nearly everyone was wrong.
- The U.S.S.R. looked strong and invulnerable in 1985. Rocky IV and Red Dawn reflected the public mood that the Soviets just might win. By 1987, cracks were showing, by 1989 areas were in open rebellion, and by 1991 the U.S.S.R. voted itself out of existence on December 26. That’s a shame. I heard that Soviet bread was so good that people would wait in line all day for a single piece.
- Stock prices have reached “what looks like a permanently high plateau,” said Irving Fisher, Yale economist, on October 10, 1929. October 24, 1929 was Black Thursday, where the market lost 11% in a single day. Oops. I will say that COVID-19 makes it feel like 1929 – the stock market is tanked and the bars are closed.
- On August 9, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned, less than two years after crushing his opponent George McGovern 520-17 in the Electoral College, winning every state but Massachusetts, where the penalty for drunk driving is re-election to the Senate.
Spoiler alert: Nixon’s decorating crimes would not stand. He resigned office and quit eating spaghetti on the same day – it’s all in the pasta now.
In a financial sense, I think everyone reading this post knows that something is horribly wrong with both the currency and the stock market. The old line attributed to Gary Shilling rings true, however: “The market can remain irrational much longer than I can remain solvent.” Just because you or I might have seen that real estate was overvalued in 2006, doesn’t mean that the market did. Irrationality can persist longer than logic, especially when everyone says, “Real estate? It never goes down.”
Okay, John, you’ve convinced me. Now what?
Well, that’s up to you. I can’t judge your situation unless you send me a few goats, some silver, and a throwout bearing for a 1973 GMC pickup. But what I was hoping is that you’d look yourself and ask a few questions:
- If you think that we’ll have unending prosperity and no shortages, what if you’re wrong?
- If you think that the riots in (INSERT YOUR CITY HERE) won’t reach your neighborhood, what if you’re wrong?
- If you think that things can’t get better than this mess we’re in, what if you’re wrong?
- If you think that things can’t get worse than this mess we’re in, what if you’re wrong?
- If you think that the stock market can’t go up, what if you’re wrong?
I was also wrong about my chiropractor. I stand corrected.
The situation that the United States enjoyed from 1945 until recently was the most prosperous in (perhaps) the history of the world so far. A good weather forecaster’s most accurate forecast is to say that tomorrow will be like today, obtuse (as in greater than 90 degrees). Until it isn’t. The hot spring day is followed up by the tornado – the winter storm strikes furiously from the north.
So, not knowing where the wind is coming from, I’m okay with it. Hot today? I’m fine. Cold tomorrow? Great. Hurricanes? Wonderful, let’s get to sea in our shrimp boat.
I guess the reason I’m so agreeable when the conditions of the world would indicate that I should be grumpy is that I’ve seen one thing again and again: when I try to divine the future from my current situation, my track record is horrible, since the returns aren’t yet all in.
Okay, I looked it up and the blue stuff is either water or alcohol. Either way I wouldn’t drink it, since if it’s methanol, you won’t see what hit you.
So, evaluate where you are, ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?” and live a life worth living. I don’t get to choose all of the events in my life, but I certainly can choose how I react.
Unless I’m wrong about that.