Tuesday, October 12, 2021

It Might Rain!

You can run for cover if you think it is going to rain, but then again, you might miss out on something.

Fear is never a emotion to be trusted.  Fear has its uses - to warn you of danger.  But it is not a substitute for logical analysis and thinking.  If you rely on fear alone to guide your life, you will miss out on real opportunities, and at the same time, end up being victimized by fraudulent ones

It has been raining a lot as of late, and it is all-too-easy to give up on your activity plans if you are afraid it might rain.  On the other hand, if you just take a wait-and-see attitude, you may find there is a few hours of no rain and take the risk that it won't rain, and enjoy a nice kayak ride.   If we listened to the weather forecast and stayed inside, we would have missed out on a nice day.

It is interesting, but fear works both ways.  People are afraid of small inconveniences - being stuck in the rain, having a bad meal, being backed up in traffic for ten minutes.  But at the same time, people will jump off a cliff if they think they are "missing out" on cliff-jumping.  Old FOMO rears its ugly head, and people trying to get into your wallet love to use Fear of Missing Out. "They didn't make many of these cars in this color, and I have another gentleman who is seriously interested in buying it!" "Better buy a house now, before you are priced out of the market forever!" 'This is a great investment opportunity that comes along once in a lifetime! Do you want to be like the guy who took a pass on Microsoft back in 1983?"

And so on and so forth.

Growing up in Syracuse, New York - the second cloudiest city in the USA next to Seattle - I realized early on that a cloudy day could be a "good day" if you let it.  If you think a few clouds means rain, and rain means cancelling all your plans, well, you'll never do anything in Syracuse, other than watch television.  The best days we had waterskiing were often cold, cloudy days when the lake was like a mirror and no one else was out there.   If you wait for a sunny day, odds are there are 1-foot waves and tons of other people making wakes.

Even if it rains, you can have fun.  One time we were stuck in a downpour in a State Park on Cape Cod.  We put out the awning on the camper, boiled two lobsters and got the cocktail shaker going, and played every song on our iPod that had the word "rain" in it.  We had fun.  Others cowered inside their fancy rigs and watched Fox News on their big-screen televisions.  Choices, we always have choices

If you're going to go camping, and shy away from any activity at the first sign of rain, well, you won't end up doing much of anything, if in fact you don't just run back home with your tail between your legs - as we see many weekend warriors do (after fruitlessly arguing with the park ranger for an hour for a "rain refund").  Some people just don't get it.  Indoor cats.

It is funny to me how we as people will risk everything we've worked for on some hairbrained scheme - whether it is MLM, a time-share, Bitcoin, gambling, "stonks" or whatever.  But when it comes to trivial risks - the chance of rain - we go running for shelter.

Maybe that says something right there about human nature.  And maybe there is something to be learned from that as well!