A warm autumn day, cotton clouds drifting overhead, the breeze patting my back telling me everything will be okay. A flock of birds nesting nearby in the old oak tree solemnly watch as I lay down a bouquet of flowers at her head. A pillar marks her final bed in the shade where we often came to get away from it all. The tree still bears our initials etched so many years ago. A love now lost. As I look down through the dirt, through the box that confines her, I see my reflection in her bright eyes. I see who I am, where I've been, where I am. I was swept to sea as the tide of life slipped from her body. Several years ago, we took what would be our last trip together to the mountains of Tibet. I remember looking down on the world. Something I'd done many times throughout my life only this time for real. We were very high up. The Greeks saw their Gods in the mists that surrounded Mount Olympus. As the clouds surrounded where we stood upon the great mountain I looked into her eyes and reflected, I saw God and he was me. Then my phone went off. It was God calling. I was only perhaps Jesus Christ doing God's every bidding, never doing anything for myself. Only working miracles for the company. I thanked my business contacts for the wonderful experience and climbed down the mountain to my waiting jet. Many people want to be God. Very few actually achieve the status in the eyes of any but themselves. Growing up I had a very well to do family. Unless you like the idea of being normal, it was a good thing. By normal, I mean a middle class working stiff at a dead end job working sixty hours a week to bring home a pay check that barely covers his bills. Bills he has because he's in denial about the state of his life. A four-bedroom townhouse with a brand new Volkswagen Jetta in the garage. A wife that mistreats him, two point five obnoxious kids and a dog that has a thing for the leather sofa he bought on his now maxed out credit card. All because he's middle class but doesn't want to look like it and would rather die than have his charade revealed. He'll be dead before he's 60 from a heart attack induced by stress and his wife's bad cooking he's too spineless to object too. If he ever criticized her, she'd be gone and he'd be living in a cardboard box. I swore that would never be me living that life. I was young and rich and I'd be old and rich. My dad made his fortune off the stock market and I would too. He often took me to Vegas to teach me a thing or two and have some fun as well. In Vegas, any moron can toss down a nickel and walk out a millionaire. That same moron will then walk into a car dealership and purchase a brand new car. Then walk over to a realtor and lay out a down payment on a fancy house. By this time, they guy is on such a high he just doesn't stop spending. Can't have a fancy car without a top of the line stereo system. Can't have a fancy house without fancy furniture. Then to top if off, this middle class fly by night millionaire hires a bunch of working stiffs, of which he was one the day before, to take care of his messes because sometime in the last 24 hours he decided he was too good to work anymore. Within a year, he'll be broke. His wife will leave him. His kids won't speak to him. The house will be gone. The car will be gone and he'll be a slave to the curb as his slaves are set free. While he's sitting there, a random person will drop a nickel into his cup and he'll remember the nickel that cost him everything. That will be the day he dies. Over the bridge and into the river to be washed up for the second time in his life. Any genius could end up the same way. That's the way it works in Vegas. If you're not careful, that's the way it works in stocks as well. You've got your companies that are selling for pennies a stock literally and you throw down a twenty because it was cluttering your pocket. You've now got several hundred shares in this company. The next day that company could be broke and you're out twenty. It could also be up to fifty cents a share and you've just turned twenty dollars into a couple hundred. Should I have risked more? Course not. It's like throwing a nickel in a slot machine. It may come back out or you may never see it again. But no matter how tempting it is, you never put a nickel back into a slot that just won you money or that lost you money. Eventually you're going to lose that nickel. The stocks to really pay attention to are the ones that you can't afford in any worthwhile quantity unless you're willing to empty your pockets. That's when you become an investor and not a gambler. You wouldn't walk through a neighborhood and buy the cheapest house with the best looking outside you can find and buy it hoping to be able to return a profit. The same way you don't just look for any stock no matter how big the name and plop down several thousand. I was 16 when I found the company that convinced me to empty my pockets. My mother was a teacher at a private school in Beverly Hills. Up until High School she was my teacher. Three thousand books filled our library and were my lesson books for English, writing and philosophy. Math consisted of watching the stock market every day for several hours calculating earnings, loses and potentials on a number of stocks. I learned how to research by studying both established and rising businesses to judge risk and return on imaginary short-term investments. My end of the year project starting in sixth grade was to make a profit on a one million dollar investment. Monopoly money of course. You don't play Black Jack in Vegas without Friday night poker with the crew. My parents taught me a lot and they taught me well. The most important thing they taught me was to strive to be a teacher. A student can only go where others have gone before. A teacher must be able to do things such as take the complex ideas of Nietzsche and explain them to someone who's never experienced anything like it before. Like telling a painter who's never seen a rhino what a rhino looks like in such detail that they can paint one as though they have. On a scale from one to ten judging how good you look, money is a +3 bonus. A nice car is an additional two points. My Benz never had an empty passenger seat though the person who occupied it often was. My social experiences growing up mostly consisted of balls and conventions leading to my high standards for peers. I found most people my age wanted to talk about vain girls, drink beer flavored rat piss and listen to talent less musicians. I wanted to discuss money, politics and with refined women. In High School everyone has a click. My click just didn't attend. At the conventions, they often talked of their extravagant adventures in the far reaches of the earth. The ones my age often traded investment tips while for some reason the older ones stuck to their adventures. We just assumed they have reached investor nirvana and we weren't old enough to handle it. I would later learn they were just sick of talking about money. The relished their adventures because they were infrequent and usually a result of a business trip. The stories I heard from one person about their trips to the Congo turned out to be one trip that lasted a month. He wanted very badly to live there but he couldn't abandon everything. He was shackled to his safe. As I continued gazing into her eyes through the filter of the earth, I realized she was my second love. My first love was money. I realize now what a mistake that was. When it was down, she was there to build me up. When the market was uncertain she was my rock. When she became ill, it failed me. Now she is gone and my money remains. Stock certificates don't make a comfortable bed. I pulled out my hacksaw and cut checks to my children. My shackles fell to the ground and I walked away. I had everything and now I have nothing. I am washed up for the second time in my life and I never felt cleaner. All I have no is the wisdom of years gone by and my feet to guide me. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow or the next day. All I know is that wherever I am, I'll never have to leave if I don't want to and that's all that matters.
