Life – The Ultimate Intertemporal Conundrum

This was a tough week for the human race. Between the Orlando mass shooting(s), the murder of a British lawmaker and all the usual murders (that don’t get so much attention, but are equally important) we didn’t do very well. It was all compounded for me as two people very close to me died of Cancer.

Death has always been hard for me to grapple with. When I was a child it terrified me. When I was a teenager it confused me. When I was a young adult I accepted it. And as an adult I embrace it. It sounds very cliche, but death is renewal. Without it the world would look a lot more static than it is today. Because of this renewal process we help to create a system that is constantly evolving and updating.

Death is never easy though. Even when you can find the good in death there’s still the morbid reality of our mortality and the lack of goodness that surrounds so much of it. I often refer to portfolio management as the management of time due to our inherent intertemporal conundrum. But life is the ultimate intertemporal conundrum. How does one manage their time inside of a certainly finite time period? In this manner life is the ultimate asset and liability mismatch. And although I spend most of my time here talking about money, finance and economics I’ve always tried to emphasize that these things are all part of the process of managing a means to an end – a good life.

Thinking about this makes me realize how special that time is. We’re given a brief instant to exist on this miracle of a planet. Sadly, we often need the most trying times to put this in the right perspective. It helps remind us that we’re here to perform the most amount of good influencing the most amount of people in the least amount of time….