Freud said that once we have the basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and health, then what we seek is wealth, power, honor, and the love of men and women. For financial titans who aggressively continue to seek tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions, you can ask, “Is the winner really the one who dies with the most toys?” How much is enough? When will you be done? Often the answer is “Never.”
To preserve the quality of my life and to spend more of it in the company of people I value and in the exploration of ideas I enjoy, I chose not to follow up on a number of business ventures, although I believed that they were nearly certain to become extremely profitable. Once I worked out the major concepts in a subject and proved them in action, I liked new mental challenges, moving on from gambling games to the investment world, with warrants, options, convertible bonds and other derivatives, then statistical arbitrage. Starting as a university professor, I expected to spend my life teaching, doing research, and talking to smart like-minded people; but from childhood I was intrigued by the power of abstract thinking to understand and direct the natural world. When I later saw how physics could predict roulette outcomes through the fog of chance, and mathematics could tip the odds in blackjack, I was drawn into a lifetime of adventure.
It was my good fortune to share most of this journey with a remarkable companion. From childhood, my wife, Vivian, loved books and was a voracious reader. One year we kept a journal about the books we read. In twelve months she cruised through more than 150 books at seven hundred words or more per minute. I know that because one day when we were both reading, I couldn’t believe how fast she was turning the pages, so, without her knowing, I timed her for an hour. She passed on her love of books and her extraordinary facility with the English language to our children and grandchildren.
She mastered bridge, studied art and art history, learned to prepare quality healthy meals, completed a master’s degree in library science, inspired her family to focus on personal fitness and health, and supported causes and charities. She was also one of the rare people known as super-recognizers. She could casually recognize people she’d met decades before, even though they had been transformed—in my opinion often beyond recognition—by age, style, carriage, shape, and size. When most of us remember the past, the memories fade over time and the “facts” may shift closer to the heart’s desire. When it had to do with people, Vivian’s memory was both extraordinarily accurate and unchanging over time.
After she died from cancer in 2011, we celebrated her life with a memorial service. When I think of our lives together, I remember what her brother said then: “Nobody can take away the dance you have danced.”
Life is like reading a novel or running a marathon. It’s not so much about reaching a goal but rather about the journey itself and the experiences along the way. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Time is the stuff life is made of,” and how you spend it makes all the difference.
Best of all is the time I have spent with the people in my life that I care about—my wife, my family, my friends, and my associates. Whatever you do, enjoy your life and the people who share it with you, and leave something good of yourself for the generations to follow.