Risk of Ruin

The world is complex, ambiguous, and random... but we want to engage. By making small, small, small, small steps, you can have the opportunity to unwind, unwind, unwind. Step back and undo whatever damage you have done. Because you said, “I will try this. Okay, that does not work. I will start this way. Oh, that doesn’t work.” Then you have the ability to build even if you are going in a very different direction to what you originally planned. 

Sometimes it is impossible to unwind. But you want to create the ability to incorporate new information. To adapt, adjust and accommodate. You want to have options. You want to create the ability to shift in different directions. You must accept a path. The path that you have been on. That is the path that you are connected to, and brought you to where you are. You must be able to let go of where you could have been, but you still want to have agency over what you do now. 

The danger of too many options is that it can prevent you from making choices. If you feel obliged to analyse everything. Detachment is partly the ability to wish other people well on their journey, and be able to focus your attention on what is important to you. At the same time, you can maintain a connection to those other choices through other people. 

Never be a forced buyer. Never be a forced seller. 

Price is supply and demand. If you must buy something, no matter what the price, that is dangerous. That is no longer a consensual exchange. Consider walking away if a sliver of that possibility exists. If you can find a way to create breathing space. Detachment at that level can feel impossible. You might, correctly, feel that it is your most important decision. It is a difficult thing to sit with, but nothing is so important, that it is more important than everything else. Certainly, nothing with a price. 

The reason to build buffers, the ability to endure, and practice detachment, is so that you do not get yourself into that corner. Poverty puts people in a corner. Poverty is a form of scarcity that reduces the available options, smothering empowered decision making. 

What is your biggest fear? 

Being able to confront waves of anxiety is important. When you make a decision, you know there are a variety of possible outcomes. What is hard to identify is the risk of ruin. That means that there is not going to be a next day. Sometimes that risk is hidden. Lying in the invisible tail of alternative possibilities that have never happened. Unlikely events with significant impacts. The building pressure of bad choices with delayed consequences. We cannot live in paralysed fear, because of these unknowns. We can build buffers to survive the unknown. Reflect. Unpack. Interrogate. 

For most of our decisions, we are not unique snowflakes. Other people have made similar choices in resonating forks scattered liberally around the world. You can do the due diligence. You can research how other people have handled reflections of your situation. Their perspective will not be identical, but there can be similar flavour. The same ingredients in infinite combinations. You can put in the work to make better decisions. Reflect, decide, and put into practice. 

As pattern soakers, we need to be wary of what has gone deep. We are wired to feel like because we have seen something often, it must be true. We do not know what we do not know. A Black Swan is something that happens when one example changes your whole view. You thought this always happens. You discover it does not always happen. This knowledge can change absolutely everything. Add a pinch of salt to what you hold to be true, and ask the question “What if I am wrong?”. You still need to build a life, and you do not need to build your life around being wrong. You still need to put stakes in the ground and make bold decisions about what you think is true, and what you think is not true.

Ruin