it’s time to go fishing

on bearing the weight of ambition, capability, and opportunity

My arms, legs, and torso are riddled with scars. There’s a finger-length gash on my upper back from my first ride on an electric skateboard, which devolved into my first encounter with speed wobble. There’s one on the outer side of my foot, which I impaled by accidentally stepping on the fallen spines of a kiawe tree in Hawaii. My knees and elbows bear the fond memories of countless scrapes, cuts, road rashes, snow burn, and more.

For as long as I’ve amassed these marks, I’ve championed the mindset that I can afford to be somewhat reckless with my body. To sprint and scramble and climb and jump, to move from origin to destination with swiftness and fun. If taking flight comes with the risk of falling, failing, or some other manner of messing up, then so be it. I can get up, dust myself off, and keep going.

I am well aware that this will not last forever.

To be strong and agile enough to move, curious and daring enough to adventure, fit and healthy enough to heal quickly… these are blessings which I know are fleeting.

The question, then – what do I do with my body, mind, and freedom while they are in the best condition of my life?

charlie munger’s tuna: ambition without capability

“I am so old and weak compared to what I was when I was 96 that I no longer want to catch a 200-pound tuna. It’s just too god damn much work to get it in. It takes too much physical strength. So I would have paid any amount to catch a 200-pound tuna when I was younger, I never caught one. And now if given the opportunity, I would just decline going. I won’t even go out after them. There are things you give up with time.”

On first read, it felt to me like he’d made peace with this. As time passed he’d given up the dream, which seemingly lessened his regret over what could’ve been.

Then I realized Charlie’s loss wasn’t limited to a tuna. He had missed out on living a life in which he had caught that fish – one that held memories of a great seafaring victory, one where he could bequeath stories and skills of battling a beast far bigger than himself. If only he’d been able to go out and catch one back then…

I think many suffer from ambition without capability. The sure-hit enterprise sitting idle in your head. The snowboard trick you swear you’ll hit this season. The life of retirement and leisure you strive to gift to your parents.

Munger bore the ache of a mission deferred into oblivion. He had the ambition, but not (yet) the time, strength, opportunity, or will to act on it.

But what if you have it all?

the mexican fisherman: capability without ambition

I frequently revisit this parable of a Mexican fisherman and an American businessman:

The businessman is at a pier in a small Mexican village when a fisherman docks with a few big tuna. The businessman praises the catch and asks how long it took.

“Just a little while.”

“Why not stay out longer and catch more?”

“I’ve already caught enough for my family.”

“So what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my kids, take a siesta with my wife, stroll into the village every evening, sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full life.”

The businessman scoffs. “I have an MBA, I can help you. You should fish longer, buy a bigger boat, then a fleet of boats. Open your own cannery, control distribution, move to LA, then NYC to run your expanding enterprise.”

“How long would that take?”

“15 to 20 years.”

“Then what?”

“Then comes the best part! You announce an IPO, sell your stock, and make millions!”

“Millions? Then what?”

“Then you retire! Move to a small coastal fishing village, sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evening, sip wine, and play guitar with your amigos.”

I have worked in a massive enterprise, then helped scale a startup by selling to massive enterprises, then invested in startups that are selling to massive enterprises, and am now taking some time away from it all.

These days, I sleep late, work a little, visit and call my parents frequently, take siestas with my girlfriend, run along the Embarcadero in the evening, sip coconut water, and play Mario Kart and poker with my friends.

Through this experiment, I’ve learned that I could lead this life. I could fish just enough to sustain myself and my family, perhaps make my merry way up the socioeconomic ladder one paycheck, one promotion, one comfortable year at a time.

And I think I might be happy in that life! A life full of the things that are supposed to make success worth wanting in the first place. Time. Health. Love. Family. Friendship. Freedom.

However.

I think the businessman is even more ignorant than the story portrays him to be.

The fisherman hears “bigger boat,” “cannery,” “New York,” and “IPO,” then imagines years of sacrifice in exchange for returning precisely to where he began. Of course he declines!

But what if he dared to want more, to want better than ‘good enough’? What if the end of the rainbow bore greater opportunities and quality of life for his family? Insulation from a bad fishing season or (touch wood) illness/injury? The means to give back to the village that gave him his full life that he appreciates so much?

The question is not whether he should stay out to fish a little longer.

It is whether he can see a challenge worth pursuing, a mountain worth climbing.

But what if you can see one? What if you live on the frontier, and you’re surrounded by them?

the culture: capability, ambition, and opportunity

Iain M. Banks writes about a post-scarcity utopia called the Culture, a society of several humanoid species who coexist with hyper-intelligent AIs called Minds. These enormously powerful AIs run ships, orbital habitats, and infrastructure, and have effectively solved all survival pressures like food, shelter, and health. Humans, by consequence, are free to pursue whatever interests them.

“The Culture itself—the result—and those who lived within it, gave little thought to any boredom with their lives, being generally too fascinated, amused and entranced by them, and too busy indulging themselves in what really mattered in life, such as sport, games, romance, studying dead languages, barbarian societies and impossible problems, and climbing very high mountains without the aid of a safety harness.”

Sport and games I think we have down. I’d venture to say that romance occupies no shortage of human headspace (perhaps especially so for intended readers of this piece). Dead languages and barbarian societies can be bookmarked for later years.

It’s the lattermost indulgences that I find the most interesting. In a post-scarcity utopia, citizens of the Culture choose willfully to build, invent, and philosophize around impossible problems and choose willfully to accept uncertainty, exposure, failure, and risk in the shadow of these tall mountains.

They have all three things Munger and the fisherman lacked in isolation – ambition, capability, and, most uniquely, opportunity.

Their opportunity is inherited. Culture citizens can pursue impossible problems and climb perilous mountains because generations of accumulated progress have negated survival pressures.

That is what inheritance is for. Not merely to make its recipients more comfortable, or to leave them scrolling or sedated, but to make them freer. Freer to love, to play, to discover, to create, to protect, to attempt things their predecessors could not.

And voluntary striving may be the most human kind. You do not climb the mountain because necessity drove you to the top. You climb because you can; because it is difficult; because, from where you stand, it is worth seeing what lies on the other side.

We are not the Culture. But many of us have inherited a smaller, imperfect version of its liberties – from parents who worked so we could dream beyond survival, and from those before them who built a world that makes opportunity feel as abundant as oxygen.

We are, therefore, simultaneously the beneficiaries of earlier climbers and the climbers of the present. We get to enjoy the view. But we also inherit the question: what do we build, solve, or protect so that those after us can enjoy even greater views?

coda

If you are blessed with an able body, strong mind, and enough freedom to choose the next chapter in your story, please put these gifts to use.

You need not found a company, cure disease, or devote every waking hour to a grand cause. You need not be needlessly impressive, busy, or exhausted. Rest is not failure. Love, friendship, family, play, and serendipity are not distractions from the point. They are much of the point.

But if some element of our reality keeps seeming broken, missing, or needlessly worse than it could be, don’t look away merely because your own life is ‘good enough’. Find the problem. Learn it. Get strong enough to be the change you want to see. Then, with your finite time, resources, and energy – get to work.

If you are blessed with the means to catch your tuna, the least you can do is set out to sea.