Someone said to me this weekend “wow Mike, you are taking this all in stride!”. It hadn’t even occurred to me that what happened was anything to stress about. Fact of the matter is that my life is 100% stress free. Possibly by force and possibly due to the horrendously stressful circumstances of the past year.

In the end, over the past few months my life has been calm. My cares of the world have become less and less significant. Life happens. Who cares if it does? There is no avoiding it, and especially there is no need in stressing about it.

Truth of the matter is this: I have a great life, I am healthy(ish), have great people who love me and show it. Just this weekend I got a surprise visit from an old friend who wanted nothing other than to hang out with me for a few hours while I was in town. She went out of her way to figure out my schedule without me knowing and then ambushed me when I least expected it. I didn’t think about it at the time, but that is pretty friggin special!

Yesterday I drove home content after a holiday with family and friends. Shortly after leaving, I decided that the freeways were no fun and weaved my way all the up the coast on the city streets. Life is way too short to rush through it with such recklessness, stopping to smell the roses is something we should all do more often. I did, 3 times on the way home. Making excuses stopping and getting a fresh cup of piping coffee on the way home and dottling around sleepy coastal towns on the Pacific.

Here is a lovely quote from around the middle.

Eisman, Daniel, and Moses then flew out to Las Vegas for an even bigger subprime conference. By now, Eisman knew everything he needed to know about the quality of the loans being made. He still didn’t fully understand how the apparatus worked, but he knew that Wall Street had built a doomsday machine. He was at once opportunistic and outraged. 

Their first stop was a speech given by the C.E.O. of Option One, the mortgage originator owned by H&R Block. When the guy got to the part of his speech about Option One’s subprime-loan portfolio, he claimed to be expecting a modest default rate of 5 percent. Eisman raised his hand. Moses and Daniel sank into their chairs. “It wasn’t a Q&A,” says Moses. “The guy was giving a speech. He sees Steve’s hand and says, ‘Yes?’”

“Would you say that 5 percent is a probability or a possibility?” Eisman asked.

A probability, said the C.E.O., and he continued his speech. 

Eisman had his hand up in the air again, waving it around. Oh, no, Moses thought. “The one thing Steve always says,” Daniel explains, “is you must assume they are lying to you. They will always lie to you.” Moses and Daniel both knew what Eisman thought of these subprime lenders but didn’t see the need for him to express it here in this manner. For Eisman wasn’t raising his hand to ask a question. He had his thumb and index finger in a big circle. He was using his fingers to speak on his behalf. Zero! they said.

“Yes?” the C.E.O. said, obviously irritated. “Is that another question?”

“No,” said Eisman. “It’s a zero. There is zero probability that your default rate will be 5 percent.” The losses on subprime loans would be much, much greater. Before the guy could reply, Eisman’s cell phone rang. Instead of shutting it off, Eisman reached into his pocket and answered it. “Excuse me,” he said, standing up. “But I need to take this call.” And with that, he walked out. 

You see, this guy was a brash, harsh, jerk. But his heart was in the right place. He had some sense of dignity and respect to ry and warn everyone of the impending doom. The above is not his only example but it is the most entertaining.  The rest of the sub-prime markets, and wall street in general were irresponsible to the point of delusional. They didn’t think they had built a doomsday machine, but they had. This entire crisis can be summed up with one word: greed. These robots wanted big fat bonuses for themself’s. If the entire market collapsed – who cares? I got my bonus check!

It’s a sad world we live in, and having any faith in anyone else to do the right thing will only set yourself up for dissapointment. You will be a slave to your anxiousness and doubt. The only true way to be free is to lose all hope. Assume that the worst possible thing someone else can do, will happen. They aren’t going to let anything like principals or respect get in the way of whatever they happen to want RIGHT NOW. We live in a disposable society, and ethics and morals are disposable nowadays. So are you, each of us will get sliced and diced until all we are is a bundle of spare parts that allows someone else to make their arms swing faster.

The only way to be happy in this world, the only way to be free of the bondage of our minds is to lose all hope. By doing that, nothing good – or bad can ever happen because your expectations are permanently neutral. 

I think there is a fundamental concept of free will that people don’t realise. You are not a victim of circumstance, you are what you make of it. Really. 

Bad decisions did make you, you make bad decisions.  So stop. I am making the right decision to remove the bad things from my life and hang onto the good things, and to find new good things.

How do you know if something is bad? Or more importantly – how do you know when something that was once good, isn’t anymore?  This is a tricky question, that needs to be answered by “feel” or “gut” or whatever you call it. The right decision is sometimes the hard one, but that makes it all that more important to make.

Standing at midnight in the garden of good and evil it can sometimes be hard to tell the good from the evil. I made my choice. Good in, Bad out. The end.