The False Promise of Ready to Eat Now

This does not constitute investment advice. I am not a financial advisor. Consult with a financial advisor before investing in anything.

It occurred to me as I was trying to salvage something edible from yet another bruised and blackening piece of fruit, that investing in the stock market is a lot like buying avocados. Your rational mind knows that the best thing to do is to buy light green, unripe ones when they are hard and won’t be battered in the shopping bag on the way home then gently placing them in a bowl next to your bananas to slowly ripen until they are dark green and perfectly soft, all the while resisting the temptation to check on them by squeezing. 

All too often however we try to game the system thinking we are smart enough to pick one that is already ripe and get it home safely so that we can have it right away. The folks at the grocery store know this and tempt you by placing the ripest avocados on top of the heap with little stickers that say “Ready to eat now.” 

Perhaps, like me, you have thrown away not a few bruised and rotten avocados. 

Investing in the stock market is similar. We know that the best thing to do is to buy a (boring) passively managed fund that is tied to the S&P 500 or some other broad market index and let it ripen for say, 40 years, but it is tempting to buy an individual stock that looks like a sure winner or get into an actively managed fund that promises to beat the index. I’ve bought a lot of rotten fruit this way as well. (Oddly enough, the only individual stock I ever bought that did better than the index was, in fact, named for a kind of fruit. It still took quite a number of years to ripen.)

Most of the time now, I am wise enough to buy unripe fruit and nurture it to maturity. But every once in a while, I think I have found the perfect specimen that is ready now and defying reason hand over my custom only to be disappointed, again. 

Come to think of it, not just investing but most things are like this. As a friend noted to me this week, “Most of my mistakes happened because I was in a hurry.”  

Everything ripens in the fullness of time. 

The Identity Raft

“It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all specked with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them…”

--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Identity is the story we tell ourselves about who we are. The construct of identity is so innate that it is almost invisible to us. At the same time, we tell ourselves a story about us, we impose a story on others, our assumptions about what their identities are or should be. 

This is what is behind most prejudice (literally pre-judging), racism, and oppression of every kind. It’s the idea that I already know who you are. That I can tell just by looking at you. Not just whether I like you or not or whether I agree with you or not. There is nothing oppressive about that. The problem comes when I think that I get to decide what you are or who you should be or that your morality should take the same form as mine. This oppression takes an infinite variety of forms. Here are some common ones:

• You should be a [insert religion].

• You’d be better if we repaired you. 

• You can’t be (insert race or ethnicity) like me but you’d be better if you were. 

• My tribe is virtuous, advanced, modern, judicious. You people are backward, ignorant, and evil.

• You must have faith in God.

• You shouldn’t believe in God.

See a theme? There’s a lot of ‘You shoulds’ in there. 

A while back, I stopped indicating my ‘race’ on various forms that asked for it. To the extent that I do identify with a race (Jewish) it is never listed anyway. The idea of Jewish being a race is a touchy one for pretty good reasons (i.e. Nazis, white nationalists, etc.) But ‘Jew’ can be just a much a ‘race’ construct as anything else is. 

Recently, I stopped indicating my gender on forms that ask for it as well. I will put ‘Mx’ for title if offered and for gender I will tick, “prefer not to say” or something like that. Although I identify as male, I don’t see any reason to say so, most of the time. Today I completed a donation form that required me to supply a title. Since there was no Mx. and I didn’t want to tick Mr., I listed my title as ‘The Honorable.’ I’d like to be. 

There is a part of identity that comes from how others perceive or define you. That is undeniable. People make assumptions about your identity based on your skin tone or the shape of your nose. Those assumptions will also likely influence how you perceive yourself, though they don’t have to. The generous thing is to give others space to self-identify and accept the identity they have chosen for themselves as fully as we can. If we could do this as society, we’d spend less time worrying about who is going in which toilet and more time concerned with whether they washed their hands before they came out. 

The language we use falsely reinforces the idea of a static identity. Could we, I wonder, wean ourselves from this fixed and static view of identity when viewing others? Can we, if not banish our assumptions, at least question them? 

The courtesy of introducing oneself with one’s pronouns is a beginning. It suggests to others we give primacy to the other’s sense of their own identity rather than our own assumptions about who we think they are.

Roles and identities can be useful the way a raft is useful when crossing a river. But once on the other shore if you cling to the raft and drag it behind you it becomes worse than useless; it becomes a burden. It impedes your journey.

To what shore are you headed? What are the planks of your identity that form the raft that will take you there? Are you prepared to leave them behind when they become an obstacle? 

It is lovely to live on a raft and look up at the stars; but don’t confuse it for solid ground, or your identity for your soul.  

Prose and the Poem

Last week I speculated about the meaning of life and whether life had its own meaning apart from those individuals or even species that inhabit it. At the same time I was writing that piece I was also writing a poem about the same thing. We call both prose and poetry writing, but they are very different. The process of writing them is different and we feel different reading it. 

Prose is like another person beaming their thoughts and their way of thinking directly into your brain. Poetry, we hope, connects at an even deeper level, a level of intellect yes, but also feeling and emotion. Not every poem connects with every person but when it does, something magical happens.

Here is a poem on last week’s prose topic of being a transmission vessel for DNA.

ביצה (Egg)

 A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

– Samuel Butler

I am a transmitter sending a signal

from the primordial past. My purpose long fulfilled.

A carrier of encrypted code that emerged from the pools of Eden

consorted with angels and giants

and wandered out of Africa establishing a tribe

of genetic material in the fertile crescent.

Slavery, kingdom, empire, each another shipping vessel

and expulsion after expulsion carrying DNA 

to Asia, across Europe, 

 over sea to Australia and through the Americas.

After 3,000 years, the tribe is still dwelling

on how badly Egypt ended

freedom joy diminished drop by drop.

The egg doesn’t care about that.

 Its sole concern is the next chick

and making a path to the future.

The egg doesn’t glance back

at the old bird lying in dust.