Actually @jacob just recently listed that interview as the example of WL9 on the wiki. My reason for linking to it was to highlight the few words she said right after the video opens at the point I linked where she says, "You start to see privilege. You start to see poverty. You start to see people who are more capable of happiness than you are, living on nothing."AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:31 pmEgo, I watched the Viki Robinson interview you linked earlier. If I understand your purpose in pointing to it correctly, I’d say that my thinking around “not failing” vs “winning” at investing has to do with my sense that FI is only a step or an aid to having the human experience that is other-centered that I want to have.
The interview made me think a few things:
1. I believe that what she is talking about there - people with very little who are more capable of happiness than she is - that is a skill. Or maybe others would call it an ability. There are several components to that skill. The obvious one is the ability to be happy with very little. Perhaps less obvious is the ability to be happy while being insecure.
Security is like heroin. Once addicted you have to have it. Tolerance and sensitization means you always need more to get the same effect. One-more-year-syndrome. And when you suddenly get a half dose, the world flips upside down. Contemplating the fact that it might go away entirely is, well, unthinkable.
Right now you are super insecurity-tolerant. It would be a shame if you were to lose that.
That is what I meant when I said above that I wouldn't like the person I'd become if I were to spend a lot of time becoming an expert investor. I believe there is a goldilocks amount of security. Too little and well-being is impossible. Too much and well-being becomes fragile and requires extreme effort to maintain. Security, for many, becomes purpose and meaning.
2. Speaking of meaning, for someone who is generally very good at cutting to the heart of the matter, notice how she struggles to explain what she calls the elder process and how she retreats to something quasi-mystical or magical. There is a compulsion for many Boomers to MAKE everything MEANINGFUL and to earn, as she says, her "little slice of eternity".
Investing, security, legacy, meaning, ... it is all jumbled together here: https://youtu.be/XpVkrIdz9-Y
And https://sive.rs/ml