Today I had a long conversation with a long-time investment lawyer about my investment strategy. I have come to recognize in a visceral way how it is impossible to experience fear and gratitude at the same time. Keeping my focus on the wonder and abundance of what I already have is the only thoughts that have any teeth compared with the low-grade anxiety that can catch me like a creeping malaise when I get lazy or tired.
Looking out in the world these days, it is easy to get caught in the grips of someone’s fear, grief and suffering. The only sane response is to create a channel that can bring in light and love. Gratitude is the flare, like a wake up call to the sleep walking that is an unintentional by-product of living fast. It doesn’t deny or sugar coat the pain in the world. It just offers a different view, a new way to look at life that makes you really appreciate it.
He disagreed with my premise that the opposite of fear is love when investing. He said that in his experience the opposite of fear was greed. I argued that greed was actually a product of fear or at least a close cousin. They both erupt from our identification with lack and are driven by the lowest common denominator in humanity. As John Steinbeck notes, “It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the products of the second.”
I have been studying Lynne Twist’s remarkable treatise The Soul of Money which exposes the myth of scarcity that pervades every aspect of how we live. When we live in the grips of “not enough” our relationship to what we have is tilted towards jealousy in relationships, greed in the material world and prejudice towards what we don’t understand. The external chase for more we lose touch with what we are really looking for, which is inside of us, not out there.
Fear and greed disconnect us from our own hearts and it is easy to make choices that separate us from the values and beliefs that define us. The money culture is loud, pervasive and convincing. We spend time building a nest egg that we don’t have time to live in. We work to make a better life for people we love but we forget that love is better translated through time together.
So my investment strategy is simple, attract investors who want to use their financial energy, to combat fear with love. Investing in Good Clean Love is a sustainable solution for a planet that hungers for love way more than money. Call me if you’re in.
