React with Equanimity
At the cinematic climax of Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005), someone throws something.
And that thing hits another thing, somewhat unexpectedly.
As a result, the plot and its conclusion change course.
I’m pretty sure I was born a lefty.
But then I grew up in a Roman Catholic neighborhood.
So, I became a righty.
I didn’t mind the transition.
For most of life, it turned out to be convenient.
This past weekend, just prior to a lovely wedding ceremony, I played tennis for the first time in, maybe, 10 years.
The “tennis pro” at the Poconos lodge was a twenty-year-old kid who pointed out, maybe correctly, that I was a more natural left-handed volleyer.
Today, at Wimbledon, former grand slam champion Venus Williams lost a first-round match to 15-year-old player/prodigy Cori “Coco” Gauff:
“Cori ‘Coco’ Gauff is still a teenager, but her legend precedes her. The first story I ever heard involving the American prodigy was about her serving incomprehensible heat while she was barely a teenager. Soon enough there were official figures to back that up. Last year at the Wimbledon junior tournament, Gauff, 14, broke 120 mph on serve in her quarterfinal match.
That wasn’t just a feat within her age group. It would’ve been good for the third-fastest serve in the entire Wimbledon women’s tournament that year. The only two to serve faster were Serena and Venus Williams, who hit 125 and 123 mph, respectively.”
Venus and her sister Serena Williams were also prodigies as teenagers.
I never elected to take tennis lessons as a kid nor have I ever worked at an investment bank as an adult, but I have learned things here and there from observing what things work and what don’t.
Last month, Brent Beshore shared a sentence he underlined in the prologue of the book Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg:
“For some reason, we seem to believe most strongly in the stuff that gets into our heads without our knowing or remembering how it got there.”
As a teenager, tennis was my favorite activity, in part, because I never took it too seriously.
Sure, I developed some poor volleying habits that any coach would want to correct, but at least, even now, I am amenable to adapt better techniques.
Leo Tolstoy once wrote in The Kingdom of God Is Within You:
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.”
At the end of each quarter, I take a look at how my portfolio is performing or underperforming.
For perspective, Eddy Elfenbein tweeted yesterday, “This decade is 95% over.”
For a better perspective, Berkshire Hathaway’s ($BRK.A, $BRK.B) Charlie Munder might suggest thinking in terms of centuries instead:
“This is the third time that Warren and I have seen our holdings in Berkshire Hathaway go down, top tick to bottom tick, by 50%. I think it’s in the nature of long-term shareholding of the normal vicissitudes, in worldly outcomes, and in markets that the long-term holder has [the] quoted value of his stocks go down by say 50%. In fact, you can argue that if you’re not willing to react with equanimity to a market price decline of 50% two or three times a century you’re not fit to be a common shareholder, and you deserve the mediocre result you’re going to get compared to the people who do have the temperament, who can be more philosophical about these market fluctuations.”
Happy Canada Day to some of you!
And Happy almost Fourth of July to some others!
