Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Rinse and Repeat &
End of the World
I just graduated college and been watching the news, and it got me depressed so ended at Uncle Bob House to see if he was up to something.
“Uncle, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve been thinking about starting a business, but honestly, I’m worried about everything. The economy. Politics. AI. The future. Some days I get so overwhelmed I don’t even know where to begin. Truth is, I’m a little depressed about it.”
My uncle sat quietly for a moment, staring out over the lake.
Then he smiled.
“Everything will be okay eventually.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“No,” he said. “It’s easy for me to say because I’ve lived long enough to watch it happen over and over.”
He pointed toward the water.
“Life is a series of cycles. Sometimes you’re riding the wave. Sometimes it feels like you’re falling into a bottomless pit. The trick is understanding that neither one lasts forever.”
I wasn’t convinced.
“What if this time is different?”
My uncle laughed.
“Every generation thinks its problems are unique.”
He took a sip of coffee.
“The other day somebody asked me how many years I thought civilization had left.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I think this may be the beginning of infinity.”
I looked at him like he had lost his mind.
He continued.
“Think about it. Roughly one hundred billion people have lived on Earth so far. If we don’t destroy ourselves, there could be trillions more. We are still in the early chapters of the human story.”
“But things seem pretty bad.”
“They always do when you’re living through them.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“I’m a student of history. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the names change, but the patterns stay the same.”
He started counting on his fingers.
“2008 rhymes with 1929.”
“The climate crisis rhymes with the Dust Bowl.”
“COVID rhymes with the Spanish Flu.”
“Political division rhymes with a hundred other periods of political division.”
He paused.
“And after one of the worst stretches in modern history—from 1929 through 1945—the world rebuilt itself.”
“The Great Depression.”
“World War II.”
“Tens of millions dead.”
“And yet humanity emerged stronger.”
I nodded.
“I never thought about it that way.”
“Most people don’t. They focus on the storm and forget the storm eventually passes.”
He pointed toward the horizon.
“What’s happening right now isn’t the end of the world. It’s a changing of the guard.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every revolution is really the replacement of elites.”
“The old media is losing power.”
“Old political structures are losing power.”
“Old institutions are being challenged.”
“The people on top today won’t necessarily be the people on top tomorrow.”
“That’s happened throughout history.”
“So you’re optimistic?”
“I’m realistic.”
He laughed.
“There are peaceful revolutions and there are violent revolutions. I’d prefer the peaceful kind.”
Then he became serious.
“But we’ll rebuild. We always do.”
He looked at me.
“You’ve heard the saying, right?”
“‘Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times.'”
I nodded.
“I think we’re entering the hard-times phase.”
“Which means?”
“Which means twenty years from now there will be heroes we haven’t even met yet.”
For a while we sat quietly.
Finally I asked another question.
“Uncle, do you think all of this is happening because of Donald Trump?”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I think the world was heading this direction long before Donald Trump.”
“Then what’s causing it?”
“The Berlin Wall.”
“The Berlin Wall?”
“The day it fell.”
I stared at him.
He smiled.
“Most people think history happens in the headlines. It doesn’t. History happens in the consequences.”
“When the Berlin Wall fell, America became the world’s only superpower.”
“For thirty years we lived in what historians call a unipolar world.”
“And now?”
“Now that era is ending.”
He leaned forward.
“China wants a larger place in the world.”
“India is rising.”
“Regional powers are becoming stronger.”
“The world is becoming multipolar.”
“More players.”
“More competition.”
“More complexity.”
“So it isn’t about one politician?”
“No.”
“One politician can influence events.”
“But no single politician controls the tide.”
Then he pointed a finger at me.
“Which brings me back to your business.”
“My business?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re waiting for perfect conditions, you’ll never start.”
“The world has always been messy.”
“There has always been debt.”
“There have always been wars.”
“There have always been politicians.”
“There have always been crises.”
“Yet businesses were built anyway.”
I sat quietly.
Then he gave me the advice I knew was coming.
“Remember this, son.”
“What?”
“Never be in debt to anyone if you can avoid it.”
“Countries get trapped by debt.”
“Businesses get trapped by debt.”
“People get trapped by debt.”
“Freedom begins when you owe less than everyone else.”
I nodded.
“What if you’re wrong?”
He laughed.
“Then we start World War III and all bets are off.”
I nearly spit out my coffee.
“In that case,” he said with a grin, “max out your credit cards.”
We both laughed.
Then he stood up and stretched.
“Enough philosophy.”
“Where are we going?”
He grabbed his fishing pole.
“Let’s go fishing.”
“Why?”
“Because worrying about the future never caught a single fish.”
