backwards

i know why the watched pot never boils--we're too busy lifting the lid every few seconds to check on how it's coming along inside, and we keep letting all the heat out. recall that einstein surmised that compound interest was the single strongest force in the universe. it all takes time.

so why are we always so impatient, and prone to sabotage ourselves and our investments, whether financial, emotional, or otherwise, when simply waiting it all out would guarantee ourselves exactly what we've hoped? ironically enough, i think it's our deeply-instilled fears of exactly what we've hoped. dylan voiced it all when he observed that "when you got nothing, you got nothin' to lose". that's the only state we can possibly know that contains no fear. everything else can be lost. or never won. either way, it's terrifying.

another way to look at it, however, is that loss is the only condition in the win/lose sweepstakes that's actually finite. everything else is pure up-side. so we're basically in this world playing with the house's money, yet we're far more terrified of going bust than we are of going anywhere else. i think that's backwards.