History Catches Up
Mar 5th, 2009 | By James Dale Davidson | Category: Abundance|
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History Catches Up There comes an inflexion point in every life when you recognize that your potential lies more in the past than in the future. Perhaps that is what is generally meant by “maturity”? Until that time, if you have an ambitious and expansive personality, you tend to see life the way “Youth” did in the medieval morality play, “The Interlude of Youth.” In the beginning of that drama, “Youth” announces to the audience, presumably comprised mostly of cowering peasants, “My name is Youth, I tell thee, My chest be as big as a tun, My legs be full supple for to run, And I am come into my father’s lands, What care I for more? Has there ever been a more concise expression of the optimism of youth? If so, I’ve never found it. That comment has stayed with me for four decades, and I suppose, I have been guilty of living on the wrong side of the divide it implies. Probably for most people, the past year has been an unpleasant reminder that “The World of Yesterday” has passed us by. The bull market is over. Our 401 K plans have become 205.5 Ks. And by implication, our retirements have either been cut in half or postponed for decades. This, of course, points even flagging attention back at the topic underscored by “The Interlude of Youth.” Unfortunately, in my case, I didn’t need an economic depression to do that. I had my ex-wife to serve that purpose. If you’ll permit a personal narrative, I’ll tell you a cautionary story. |
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Once upon a time, I married a young woman, probably for no better reason than I found myself unmarried in my forties and she seemed attractive. She used to tell me that like Peter Pan, I refused to grow up. I never identified with Peter Pan, so I disliked the analogy. But if I were to be entirely frank, I would have to confess that I was not affected by the passage of years in quite the same way that many of my peers may have been. Long past the age when the “Youth” of the medieval morality play would have been frankly “Old,” I was still limber and eager and confident that the full potential of life lay ahead of me. Partly, this may have been a happy accident of genetics. The passage of years weighed less heavily on me than on many. Thirty years ago, I was flattered to read a profile of myself in the New York Times which described me as “movie star handsome.” I was always a fitness freak, which undoubtedly contributed to keeping me in youthful shape. I also benefitted, (or possibly suffered) from the fact that I never needed glasses. No presbyopia here. My eyes were tested last week as part of my pre-birthday physical, and at 62 I still have 20/20 vision. In any event, I have looked younger than my age for decades, with the result that the passage of years did not abruptly jar me into behaving as though life is of limited duration. I was still being “carded” when I was 57, the age at which I met my current wife, a former Miss Brazil, who is three decades younger than I, and a spectacular beauty. If you read Crisis Strategy Alert , you have seen a snapshot of her. When we met, we never talked about age, but it was obvious that she was in her twenties. After we had decided to marry, I took her aside for the requisite “full disclosure” talk about aging and its consequences, reminding her that by the time she became my age I would be 90 years old. “Then what?” Her answer:” Then people are going to say what a lucky guy you are.” It was a convincing reply for me. We married. And then the trouble began with my ex-wife, whom I had wed when she was just a year or two older than my second bride. Unfortunately, our marriage didn’t last. At first, we seemed to be great lovers, though perhaps not great friends. After a time, I found it difficult to sustain my enthusiasm. We ceased to be great lovers. And we did not indulge enough in companionable activities to sustain our relationship. Other women were throwing themselves at me on a more than occasional basis, and I am afraid that I caught more than a couple of them. One thing led to another and we split up at the peak of the Dot com boom. Perhaps because I felt guilty for failing in my marriage, I agreed to a generous settlement staged over time. Unfortunately, my net worth plunged by about $50 million as Dot.com valuations went the way of all flesh. So rather than having to wait for the onset of the current economic calamity to recognize that I no longer exercise the control over my life that I have enjoyed enormously and taken for granted, I had my ex-wife on the case. Consequently, I feel as though I have aged about twenty years in two calendar years, as she pressed down on me with the full force of law. Which leads to this heart-felt advice. My experience of divorce is a cautionary one for you. Don’t go there. If you must live outside your marriage, do as Jimmie Goldsmith did, move to a Catholic country and take a mistress. Or several mistresses. His house in Mexico was big enough to accommodate all his wives and lovers, who lived there together like the Sultan’s harem. That probably isn’t the best way to live. Even more to the point, to carry it off you probably have to be a billionaire with a personality larger than life, and more money than Citi Bank. But given that that is unlikely today, trying to improvise it may be better than giving a bitter woman the power to compound or impose a personal economic calamity, that can exceed the power of the economic depression in decimating your assets. I would rather face depression any day. I understand depression, because of my multi-year study of the history of depressions. I can’t say that my multii-year study of my ex-wife yielded as much understanding. In fact, there may actually be some sense in which I was willing to devote the long hours of research to the topic of economic depressions, an apparent waste of time for a young man, or a man in his prime, because I deluded myself into thinking I had more time to waste than I did. In any event, I think now of the author, Stefan Zwieg, whose autobiography, “The World of Yesterday,” recounts the costs and consequences of the suicide of European prosperity in World War I. The point that it drives home is the degree to which life is path-dependent. You may have all the ability needed to make a fortune in a bull market, but be reduced in circumstance by politicians, or bitter women, when history gives them power over you. Zweig made his way to Brazil, where in February , 1942, at age 61, he and his second wife ended their lives during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. He wrote: “our world is destroyed and at the age of 60, you are undermined anyway and half finished. I want to exist no longer. I don’t have decades in front of me. I don’t want them any more.” That’s not my attitude. I hope it isn’t yours. No matter how stringent the economy or ex-wives become, there is great promise in every morning. I look forward to exploring it with you.
James Davidson Editor, Abundance
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