Survival and Luck; A Christmas Story
This week I was driving whilst listening to one of my favourite podcasters, Tim Ferris. He was talking to Jim Collins in a wonderful poetic conversation. In this particularly poignant moment, Tim Collins’ words were reverberating through my car. He speaks slowly and deliberately. He said, “you never know when the people you might want to say something to might disappear”. “Any number of things can happen; accident, disease, life just expires. And I hope that I take in this idea that if you have it to say, don’t wait too long.”
Those words were really sitting with me when a young guy on a motorbike sped past me on a roundabout. My mind, as it often does whilst driving on the roads in the Cayman Islands, thought, ‘that guy is going to get himself killed.’
Moments later he came off his bike in front of me. He must have been going at least 50 miles per hour. His body spun along the grassy central reservation of the highway like a rag doll being blasted out of a catapult.
My breath stopped. There were a few cars in front of me, closer to him. I picked up my phone to call the ambulance. The Brit in me (we have lived here for 15 years, there’s no excuse) dialed 999.
By the time I had gathered my thoughts to remember what the actual number for the emergency services is, he was walking and seconds later he was literally climbing back on his bike. The other cars had driven on.
How he was alive I have no idea. The softness of the grass had saved him. He had somehow avoided hitting the lamp posts strategically placed down the middle. I am not particularly religious (still finding my way in that sense), so I am not sure “anyone was looking down on him”. It was pure luck.
If there is ever a moment that you realise the fragility of life and the role of luck, it’s witnessing something like that.
A moment of peace.
I have been thinking a lot about how we make ourselves “anti-fragile” recently.
You can make yourself anti-fragile in your financial life by avoiding excess debt (ideally being debt-free), maintaining liquidity at all times, having multiple income streams.
You can make yourself anti-fragile in your body by eating well, avoiding sugar, drinking in moderation, exercising frequently, lifting weights.
You can make yourself anti-fragile in your relationships by investing time in the people you care about, learning to listen, being compassionate.
You can do all of this. But sometimes something comes right out of left-field that is just really unlucky. We call it tail risk. Events like COVID or the twin towers or Pearl Harbour (or coming off your bike at 50 plus miles per hour) – these are tail risk events.
Morgan Housel explains how the biggest events of any decade are the things that no one is talking about until they happen. These low-probability outlier events are all that matter in life. “It’s not the things that we talk about on a daily basis. It’s not the risks that are in the newspaper. They rarely matter that much. It’s those crazy out of the blue, low probability events that move the needle.”
We need to protect ourselves from those ‘move-the-needle’ events by building in a margin of error into all parts of our life. The more ‘anti-fragile’ we make ourselves the more likely we are to survive.
I have come to realise that success in life is more about survival than anything else. Avoid the really dumb stuff and make sure you don’t blow yourself up.
My biker friend experienced a tail-risk event. Nothing else will ever be more important in his life than the fact that he landed on grass and missed the lamp posts. In that moment he survived. I hope he realises how lucky he is this Christmas.
“Risk is what’s left over when you have thought of everything. It’s not the car you see that kills you.”
Wishing you and all your family a very Happy Christmas.
Georgie
georgie@libertywealth.ky