We are what we risk
Trying
His brother worked every day except weekends and Fridays. Talking and spreadsheets and meetings galore. Solving profits together. He did this for years. The days had been happy. He didn’t need more.
He made enough money and then started giving. Bestowing and granting kept weekends and Fridays and Mondays now free.
As he got older, the giving consumed him. He missed bottom lines more easily gamed, and could no longer answer all others’ dreams.
So there went his Mondays then Fridays then weekends. Calls. Checks. Advising. Until he achieved something of note, a change that would last. He was applauded – felt finally proud.
He died a couple years later. Lightning. His money would be missed. He did life right, they said.
When he got to those gates, they asked him “What have you risked?” He answered, “Could there be more?”
They never opened those gates. Turns out there was.
“I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.” The Bell Jar
“Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.” On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous
“But now try to recall the last time you saw the ‘hero’ die within his drama’s narrative frame.” Both Flesh and Not
“In June, Laurie arranges an interview with the head psychiatrist of the hospital whose methadone program Art is enrolled in. The history of modern jazz is a history of musicians ending up in rooms like this; the whiteness of the walls and coats like a denial of the dim, nocturnal world of the music.” But Beautiful
“There is something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God - Virginia Woolf” Zero at the Bone
“This is another general rule of trading: you don’t necessarily make money by being right, but by being right when others are wrong.” The Trading Game
“The measure of a man’s greatness would be in terms of what his work cost him. Wittgenstein once told someone.” The Last Novel
To see the connections, open the site below.
