Realms Uncharted

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

It’s never been easier to plug in and stay connected to a world that seems to spin faster by the day. Yet, staring through screens, at the same things, from the same angles, in the same lighting, at the same time, it’s also never been easier to lose sight of what’s important, to make mountains out of molehills, and miss the forest for the trees. The best preventative medicine is to look towards actual mountains and forests—exactly what I’ve been up to while temporarily escaping to the Canadian Rockies.

Driving across the Trans-Canada Highway, the pressure building and popping in your ears acts as a crude altimeter. Looking upwards to the mountain peaks is so awing, you have to continually remind yourself to keep your eyes on the road. You’re reminded of how small you are.

At night, sunsetting skies pair with crisp air. There is no room for interruption as you read through a surplus of archived material that had accumulated over months. There’s less friction as you search for hidden connections—hoping for a Eureka! moment.

John Templeton understood the importance of freeing oneself from distraction. Much of his investing career - which generated market-trouncing returns for decades - was not done by thrusting himself into the thick of Wallstreet, but rather from the quiet calm of Nassau, Bahamas. A short passage from John Train’s Money Masters of Our Time captures the scene:

But how does the investor escape from the unending static of “news” and opinion, the surge and ebb of passions of the crowd?

One answer is experience. After thirty years of getting a bloody nose every time he jumps on a bandwagon, even the most enthusiastic investor attains some measure of detachment from the crowd’s enthusiasms and desperations.

Templeton has gone a lot further, though, to make it as easy as possible for him to keep his perspective. The distance from his large, cool, porticoed white house on its little hill overlooking the grounds of the Lyford Cay to the roar and shouting of the floor of the stock exchange is measured in psychological light-years. The house itself and everything in it are a silent reproach to excitement and hyperactivity.

Templeton himself—a spare, neat man, even in that warm climate carefully dressed in pale lime-colored trousers and a striped lemon-colored jacket with a neat striped tie—would be, one knows at once, the last man in creation to fall victim to some ephemeral enthusiasm. As he drives slowly in his blue Rolls from his house to the club to have a light lunch with a Canadian Banker, is his soul full of passionate yearnings to catch a one-week move in some over-the-counter speculation? Scarcely.

Does he spend feverish days on the telephone, getting the latest gossip from the brokers, the latest news, and the jokes going round the floor? Scarcely.

Templeton also obsessively explored realms uncharted. He looked far and wide, searching where others weren’t and revisiting what had been overlooked. There was never a hesitation; only a genuine willingness to be curious and flexible to retain a unique perspective. He knew that this approach - especially during periods of heightened distress and pessimism - was the right path for him.

I am apprehensive toward any system seeking to copy the exact approaches of others. But there is immense value in studying them in hopes of identifying the rare aspects that are portable from year to year, decade to decade, and beyond. It is never a bad idea to test and recalibrate one’s own compass.

Along with endurance, I’ve often stressed the value of simplicity and attaining it through distillation. But distillation focuses on output. To improve the other side of the equation, more effort must be put into moderating influence while avoiding accidentally starving from a lack of inspiration. This means seeking more uncommon and less correlated sources, sidestepping the typical, and delicately balancing escapes while avoiding falling into escapism. Perhaps working backward more often; certainly still rarely rushing forward. There will undoubtedly be a loss of signal, but that is a fair tradeoff to reduce noise by a greater magnitude.

Remember the words of Korzybski: “The map is not the territory.”

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Disclaimer

This publication’s content is for entertainment and educational purposes only. I am not a licensed investment professional. Nothing produced under the Invariant brand should be thought of as investment advice. Do your own research. All content is subject to interpretation.