The Unveiling

In his 2008 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett described the financial crisis which had just passed: "As the year progressed, a series of life-threatening problems within many of the world’s great financial institutions was unveiled." His choice of the word "unveiled" struck me from that first read, though I couldn't put my finger on why. Now, living through the modern Coronavirus pandemic, I think I finally understand it.

The world today is no different than it was a few months ago, but it did resolve itself to the present in one particular way - a relatively lethal, and quickly-propagating virus spread across the globe. It could've happened at any time and place, but the world has just unveiled to us that it will happen here and now.

For me, this has occurred with a peculiar backdrop:

1. At the beginning of March, we went to Arizona for Merry's work conference and a family vacation. I had kept up on the virus's spread and I knew we were cutting it close to travel when it might already have been spreading through the local population.
2. I planned to finish working in June of this year, by which time I expected to have both adequate money in my checking account and IRA to constitute a safety net. Now my real estate businesses are in distress (tenants aren't paying rent) and my IRA value has collapsed, making this unviable.
3. Now, due to the virus, all our travel plans have been put off and we necessarily spend almost all of our time at home. Merry and I both work from home and Signe's daycare is closed.

There are many silver linings, though:

1. Though Signe being home while we have to work is a logistical nightmare, it is also "immersion therapy" for a degree of accountability to my family that I had avoided for the past three years.
2. I get to spend lots of time with Signe every day, as her language and imagination are quickly developing.
3. Going nowhere and without daycare expenses, we spend almost no money.
4. My habits are strongly-formed, and anything that pushes me out of them is probably a long-term benefit. To give two examples: my drinking has decreased to almost zero, and I have cut out buying many things that had grown habitual.
5. Much of this is a glimpse into what a post-work life could be like, before I choose to go through with it.

When I look out the window in this new world just unveiled, I see something quite different than before. I see a world in which travel is impossible - indeed, much of the outdoors are literally off limits - and quitting work is financially infeasible. The world didn't change - before & after photographs out that same window would be indistinguishable - this unveiling has simply occurred with ruthless speed, along an axis I of which I had never conceived, and I stand disbelieving the sight before my eyes.

Another Country, A Second Reading

I wrote a story a few years ago called Another Country that is still my favorite thing I've written. And then I mentally let it go. About six months ago, though, I went back to proofread it and clean up some grammar (stuff that should've happened before I ever considered it finished) before finally showing it to a friend. That re-reading allowed me to see aspects of the story that weren't apparent to me when I wrote it. I've read about this phenomenon, but I had not experienced it for myself until then.

What did I notice in that second reading? Mainly, that the story contains a metaphor of women - and specifically possible romantic partners - as countries. Both are 'places' that we may visit for a length of time - short or long - and in which we may experience a great deal or a little, shallowly or deeply, leaving us anywhere between unchanged, and profoundly changed. (Funny: the metaphor isn't just apparent in the story - it's almost heavy-handed, making it that much more remarkable that I didn't notice it while writing it.) Furthermore, any Freudians would likely notice that "country" is even prefixed phonetically by an especially foul (though pertinent) term.

It wasn't just that the metaphor eluded my conscious consideration - the whole notion that this was a story about women, or relationships, was not what I considered myself to be writing. It began as a story about travel, and the way places imprint themselves on us. The women worked their way into the story, I think, as part of the natural 'backdrop' the narrator experiences (or so it seemed at the time). I can only suspect that from that point, the metaphor took hold subconsciously, which pulled them further into the story, reinforcing the metaphor, in a virtuous cycle. This would at least explain the relative elegance of the narrative alignment to the metaphor - the narrator's encounter with each woman feels harmonious with the place - not in the sense that the women "belong" in their locations, but rather that you believe his memory of each country could never be separated from his memories of the particular women. And, vice versa.

It's interesting to me that Gabby, herself traveling between countries, seems to transcend the framework in which the other women exist. So what is she? She could be seen as the counterpart to the narrator - someone else whose romantic attachments change with each country. Interestingly, both characters' home countries are referred to - early in the story, their having departed them, and near the end, their returns (the narrator's occurring in the story's last line, albeit only in his mind). This parallels the way our relationships exist within the bookends of our lives, as we arrive and depart from this life alone.

No Way Back

It it tempting to view life as climbing a mountain of greater and greater recognition of the workings of the world around us. This may or may not be true, but by certain outlying moments of my life, I've come to the conclusion that the steps a person climbs on this journey slowly evaporate behind them. The journey we each take cannot be retraced, nor do we necessarily retain the steps we've taken - no matter what we believe we have gained, our memories of learning are one and the same with the wisdom of knowing, and as the memories turn to echoes in our psyche, all we are left with is habits of thought and action.

"That is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They don't grow wise. They grow careful." - Ernest Hemingway

A More Refined Take On Alternate Realities

I went through a period after high school where I was obsessed by the idea of alternate realities, and later, their relationship to so-called "multiverse" theories in physics. Of course, I didn't yet understand topics like probability and expected value well, so my conception was basically, "everything is happening somewhere", which isn't what the theory actually suggests.

In a nutshell, even a very large number of permutations on the same building blocks should NOT be expected to produce stochastic output (though it may, of course, at one or more resolutions). It's more likely they would produce distributions and clustering of the same nature that we see in our single universe when we analyze most discrete phenomena across a large number of observations.

So what? Well, at some point it occurred to me that the first rule of ecology ("you can never change just one thing") is probably intertwined with this. Those early thought experiments of mine always took the form of, "what if the past looked just like my past, except for X?" (e.g., "what if I had done better in college classes my freshman year?") These might be fun to think about, but there's no reason to think that they are viable "alternate realities." After all, how likely is it that some alternate universe is different in one way that is so local? (Everyone is the same except me, and my differences don't manifest at all until the age of 19.) You can have fun, I suppose, assuming not very much would have to change for a different sperm to have fertilized the egg I grew from, but even that is a flawed assumption, is it not? After all, they were all obeying the same physics that all of history had to obey. Are you telling me that a change that would make a different sperm win wouldn't have had an effect even 5000 years ago (much less a billion - outlier variations tend to amplify through time) that would've led to a meaningfully different present?

Something that might be more useful to consider: what would make my example alternate reality plausible? In other words, let's answer that question first, then work backwards. The reason this might make sense is because nobody who is examining the implications of alternative realities as a way of understanding themselves and their own past decision-making actually cares about whether envisioned alternate timelines are likely reconcilable into the multiverse.

It's not crazy to think that if my brain chemistry had been a little bit different, lending more to discipline and less to impulsiveness, I might have succeeded my freshman year of college. But I likely would have grown up with different experiences, giving me a different personality (not *just* "more discipline"), and making it unlikely that I would have been at the same college, with the same friends, the same perspective on life, or the same values.

I think it's a MORE rigorous thought process this way - at least, in the way rigor matters for what we're trying to assess. When the difference first occurred to me, I perceived this as "sucking the fun out of the exercise," which is how it often feels as we solidify a process that felt creative, but I think it also helps train me in planning for the future. Because the future also requires a careful dose of imagination, tempered by an understanding of how the world works. It only stands to reason that the more fully-formed is the latter, the less space exists for the former.

Grinding Knottedness and News From Abroad

Something from a month ago I never got around to posting:

In watching this Denmark situation wind up into a knot, I've repeatedly suspected we were at peak knottedness, but it just keeps knotting up further. It's painful in a grinding, chronic sort of way. I suppose it's like anticipating a bottom in the stock market while holding positions that are decreasing in value, telling yourself that it is transitory before they will reverse higher, and that if you can just ride out the pain, you'll be better off in the end.

Now some more facts have come to light that make the situation more complex - er, knotted:

1. My work has informed me that I will no longer be able to work part time after the beginning of the year.
2. Merry talked to someone who recently moved from the U.S., and they are on a 'waiting list' for child care - the implication being that both Merry and I would not be able to work on day one of moving, even if we were both willing and able.

If that weren't bad enough, Merry's potential employer has continually delayed her on-site interview. Having concluded this is the 'next step' to making a decision, this leaves Merry and I at an impasse until this can occur, or until we hit a self-imposed deadline of the end of November. Then today, her potential employer suggested the visit may not be possible until January!

Conceptually, I see two paths forward:

1. Continue to navigate this knotting as far and long as it takes us, until one or more natural points of resolution each act to un-knot some portion of it all.
2. Set boundaries (time-based or otherwise) on how far we are willing to let it take us and make decisions at those boundary points with the best available information at the time.

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And last week, finally - news from abroad:

Merry finally heard from her potential employer - the position is no longer available, as the entire group is being dissolved! I suppose we should see this as dodging a landmine. Certainly the magnitude of the news - in as far as it impacts the team she would've worked with - is much larger than we could've guessed; the woman who would've hired Merry onto her team is herself soon out of a job. What if we had gone sooner!? We might've just arrived when this news hit.

Superficially, it relieves the constraints that had been piling up behind this situation. But now where should all the energy flow which we had summoned for this decision?

As we were considering the possibility of moving, we occasionally talked about what we might do if we stayed. There were plenty of possibilities. In the shadow of a possible move across the globe, options like relocating in Omaha, or taking more substantial time off, suddenly appeared quite trivial, by comparison. Without an outside pressure acting on us, will these possibilities simply evaporate? It seems very possible. And so, we need to find a way to capture the positive energy this situation has produced.

I'm leaning heavily towards not working after the middle of 2020. Signe is an age where I want to spend more time with her. I also want to spend more time with my parents, more time focused on hobbies and exploring other interests, and more time doing structured things that I've rarely had the time and focus for around a work schedule.

I could travel some, too, of course, but that wouldn't be the main drive. I have started to understand that the promise of travel is not wholly what it seems - it is, in part, an empty promise - a mental snare, in a sense, like any bad habit. It can bring us new experiences and a broader perspective, but none of that is guaranteed. And really, is travel the only means to achieve a broader perspective? I am starting to think of travel as a mental hack - a way to achieve certain things with the least mental exercise, whereas something like meditation requires more discipline, patience, and focus, but costs 100% less money.

None of this is to say that I will stop traveling immediately, or stop traveling, period. There remain plenty of reasons to do so. A few weeks ago I went on a hiking trip to Zion, and the hiking did not require "broader perspective" or "inner peace" to have been more than worth the time and money.

Running Out The Clock

Merry and I expected to have our flights to Denmark purchased by now. She'd be scrambling to be ready for her interview and presentation, and I'd be fervently organizing the logistics of our trip to get the most out of a scant couple days there. Then the company decided to delay the process - we're still not sure why.

Not that the initial rush of this whole proposition hadn't already mostly worn off, but now we have a delay of several weeks to contend with (and of course, there's no real telling how long it will be, or if the position will still even exist). But it does give us a little time to further de-stress about this, assuming we need that.

For my part, I've already succumbed to a state where I feel like anything would be fine - nothing would be great and nothing would be terrible. But this is almost certainly not a real assessment. More likely, the impenetrable maze of pros and cons has simply congealed into an impenetrable mass of incalculable tradeoffs. And so, lately, I've just been throwing different decision frameworks at it to see if anything sticks:

1. My dreams still seem to be activating on the Jungian "Hero" archetype as I detailed in my last post. I still think this supports the idea of going, but that makes some assumptions about how such archetypical activation really works - how precise the mechanism is, and whether it's best thought of as 'encoded wisdom' or 'an epiphenomenon.' I'm far from educated enough on any of it to know.
2. An ROI framework requires converting the intangible value of experiences into money (or vice versa) - which is profoundly difficult to do, in my experience. Before my semester abroad, I could never have guessed the 'return' that the intangible aspects of that time gave the trip. Quite the contrary, when the financial crisis occurred that fall, I was certain I had profoundly ill-timed my trip - quitting my job and going quickly cash flow negative. Just when the market was tanking, I was least able to take advantage of it (an aside: I did take out student loans and invest that money). It's remarkable how wrong we can be, even when we seem most certain. In the end, the financial characteristics of the trip were overshadowed - by an order of magnitude - by the experiences I had and friends I made. Having said that, I don't think I can just assume the lesson is: "All trips overseas will have huge positive intangible benefits." It seems more likely that the real lesson is: "the unfamiliar option has a much wider distribution of possible outcomes, both positive and negative."
3. I suspect a "regret minimization" framework would over-weight new experiences above the financial drawbacks. It might also equalize my worries over my parents against the benefits to Signe of having more varied experiences.

The 'rhyme' of the world (how constellations of events possess such peculiar patterns that are anything but random) continues to amaze me. (And teach me!) At the same time, the cadence is slowed to a tempo I should've suspected, for nothing of the civilized world moves at human speed. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if we never make it there for the interview. After all, we got greedy and started telling people about it before it was at all certain. Such behavior, all by itself, is often enough for the world to cancel its plans on you without further ado.

The Call To Adventure

I'm so sick of thinking about moving to Denmark that I'm sick of realizing I'm sick of it. Again and again, I turn the pros and cons over in my head until they mishmash into something utterly without meaning or usefulness. Never before have I given so much time to a real-world decision, and been left with so little to show for it.

Because of this, I've started considering alternative decision models. The most obvious one was to simplify the list of pros/cons to only the most important and then score them, or rank them, or something, to try to simplify the equation. That made the list more approachable, but it didn't fix the fact that different items are "denominated in different currencies", so to speak - some tangible, some intangible.

The last few days, I've been thinking about applying a heuristic based on Jung's "Hero" archetype. This occurred to me when I started suspecting that my dreams were resonating on the "call to adventure" stage of the archetypal cycle (things like confronting people or situations I'm afraid of).

Let's assume my assessment of the dreams are correct, and are linked to this decision (thoughts of it has consumed so much of my waking time, I assume the link must be there). What are the implications? The "call to adventure" is a necessary stage of the Hero's journey, which is to say, it is a necessary stage for personal growth. (This is also intuitively true, I think - "no pain, no gain.") This path certainly portends 'pain' in the sense that there will be unfamiliar and no doubt trying situations to overcome, requiring sacrifices.

I guess this means that the situation is "resonating" that archetype in my psyche. It's not really a decision model, but I suppose that suggests that I should do this because it will help me grow? Is that the conclusion any time a series of dreams seem to indicate activation of the hero archetype? "Go, now!" I feel like I should better understand where the "wisdom" inherent in this psychic signal begins and ends.

One reason I'm hesitant is because these dreams didn't occur when the possibility of moving first came up - they happened after I had been fixating on it for weeks. How surprising should it be that something I've obsessed over for weeks found a way into my dreams? If I thought obsessively about buying a fancy car long enough, maybe my psyche would mold the hero archetype onto that, too.

Most of my anxiety with modern decision-making is our innate inability to understand where a specific option fits in the context of all possible decisions. Examples:

• "Should we move to Denmark, or stay in our house?" Well, I don't know, but what about moving to Spain? San Diego? Closer to downtown Omaha? To a bigger house? To a smaller house? To an apartment? Live in an RV?
• "Will moving to Denmark make me grow as a person?" Maybe? But even if it will, is it the only, best, or most efficient way for me to grow?
• "What's best for Signe?" I don't even know the answer to that question in Omaha, much less in a place I've never visited. I can't dislodge a fallacy if it was never lodged onto anything in the first place.

In other words, questions we ask ourselves about how we use our scarce time may be presented as binary. But, virtually all decisions are part of a matrix that consists of a multitude of dimensions. We can't hope to analyze the matrix itself - all we ever really have is heuristics to apply against the limited data we possess. I have always felt that the gulf between these two approaches is much wider than most people seem to believe. If I'm right, then in this gulf lay a truth about the futility of trying to analyze the sort of things that have been occupying me for this last month.

And yet, somehow, I doubt that this knowledge is quite enough to convince me to simply stop. But if I'm lucky, perhaps I can at least figure out how to apply some proven heuristic (Jungian or not) to the problem in a novel way.