What Progress Means

To learn is to know what to reverse or shed. To grow is to know what one must be beyond.

Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

Children talk too much, but this is a good thing. They are learning how to talk/interact. A grown-up who talks too much just doesn’t know what not to say. It’s not cute; it’s off-putting.

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While younger, we are encouraged to experiment and wander, to try many things. This we should do not to keep doing, but to get to what we are willing to zero in on and double down on—what we find worth dedicating ourselves to.

There will be experimentation, still; there will be trying out stuff. However, this will happen within a field and domain already chosen. We will be seeking to expand. The nature of things remains the same, but the sphere of concentration changes. It narrows so that it can become bigger.

At 22, you want to be a lawyer, a finance bro, a coder, a writer, a life coach, and a philosopher. You try these out, because you want a world where you do everything.

At 35, however, you’ve realized that you don’t need all of them, because you can still create that world by doing just one of them. You pick one thing, you concentrate on it, you expand it, and it opens the door to everything.

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When married, you don’t behave as you did while dating. Seduction is about finding; a relationship is about holding. The seducer scans his environment; he wants to see as much as possible. Once he finds, he doesn’t need this; what he needs is focus. He must not see many women; he must see only the one in front of him, the one he wants to build a life with.

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In investment, one must be aggressive to make money, but keeping money requires playing a different game, that of defense and protection, because it’s losses that wipe people out, not really an inability to make money.

You bet well to become rich, but you pick investments that won’t lose money to stay wealthy.