On chaos & tranquility
We are living in a chaotic world. Its complexity is far beyond our imagination, let alone our understanding.
Yet, it seems that almost everyone strives for inner peace and tranquility.
While we cannot determine what happens to us, we can at least choose how we respond to relieve our fear and anxiety.
The question is, how to achieve that serenity?
The trauma or disturbance in our daily life mostly comes from the unexpected, especially unforeseen failure or accidents.
We would not mind if we won a billion-dollar lottery. But most of us would panic if we suddenly lost a thousand dollars. There is an unfortunate asymmetry in our daily life. And that’s why so many people are zealous in predictions.
Unfortunately, forecasting is often futile because the world is too complex and too adaptive for us to comprehend. If we try to predict, we would inevitably use the past knowledge, which could be wrong.
Even if we make decisions by tossing coins, we still assume that one of your available choices must be happening. What if none of them happens? We deliberately ignore other possibilities.
We are prone to use the past as the anchor to guide our future. However, the past does not necessarily indicate the future; only time tells.
If we cannot rely on predictions, what should we do? The ancients knew the answer.
In Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes says
“It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.”
When we invest, we avoid to put all our money into one position. Instead, we diversify. Likewise, we may not want to concentrate all our efforts on one thing because we’ll never know if it will succeed or not until the end.
It is crucial to explore multiple opportunities at the same time. Because if we have options, we don’t have to worry much about the failure of one particular event.
We still need to focus on things that matter to us, but we can try many fail-safe ventures with capped efforts. Of course, we need to avoid risk of ruin. We can be both extremely conservative to risk of ruin and fairly liberal to risks that have huge upside. With this barbell strategy, we don’t have to rely on precise predictions.
Another secret to reduce our anxiety is to want less. We may need to cut the unnecessary pursuits. If we want to be financially independent, we may not want to
“ buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.“
- Dave Ramsey
So a complex problem does not necessarily require a complex solution. To lead a tranquil life in a chaotic world, we can seek options and practice minimalism.