Touching Home.

We visited with a dear old family friend this week.

Spent an entire day together talking about our shared passion.

Continuing a conversation that’s stretched over a couple of decades by now.

After she left, I texted her.

Told her how meaningful it had been to spend time together.

She responded it felt like "touching home."

Touching home… I know exactly what she meant by that.

Being with people who feel familiar beyond words.

People who see you for who you are.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

I'm not sure you can engineer those moments.

But I wish for you to experience them.

Be open to them.

Pursue them.

I was all set to get up on my soap box and harp on about the difference between investing and gambling.

Investing is the activity of funding worthwhile human activity.

Investing is the thing at the center of modern capitalism that allows us to stretch beyond our individual limitations.

In David Nadig’s words, it’s how we allocate resources for species-level flourishing and leverage humanity's core superpowers: collective action and collective cognition.

As a close friend and mentor often puts it, the thing that makes:

And if you can’t you draw a line from your investment to supporting species-level human flourishing, you're probably just entertaining yourself. Creating private financial noise. Gambling.

But this week, I sent my clients information about their portfolios.

As is my regular practice, I talked about risk. Including what big bad situations could look like. Things like a 2008-style crash and the Financial Crisis.

It's a weird thing to do. At least it doesn't seem like a natural thing to do. Forcing people to stare at red numbers on a page. Forcing them to look at unlikely replays of worst-case scenarios.

Here is one reason why I do it. (Other than, you know, because risk management is integral to the professional management of money.)

I know I've told this story before, but it's been on my mind.

In the spring of 2008, Joline Godfrey invited me to join a retreat she had organized.

Joline has been a family educator for a long time, and she's helped parents and children develop resilience and personal grounding in the midst of extreme abundance.

As the freshly minted economist that I was, I was supposed to teach a group of older teens and young adults about the economy and markets.

I am reasonably convinced I completely and utterly flubbed the assignment when I started whipping out equations on a whiteboard that had been set up in a yurt in the middle of the California central coast.

To make up for her lack of wisdom in including me in the lineup for the retreat, Joline had another guest, Michael.

Michael was a professional songwriter who worked with each of the kids one-on-one to write a song about what was on their mind. What they wanted to share with the rest of the group. What they needed to express.

When we got back into that yurt and the kids sang their songs in front of one another, I was shocked at how much angst and anxiety all of them carried within them.

The burden of the money that wasn’t theirs (yet) and still had defined nearly every aspect of their lives.

And the raw fear of losing it, that thing they had experienced intimately but that had never truly been theirs.

I didn’t need to teach them about markets and the economy… The early innings of the Great Financial Crisis and the stress it brought into their homes had taken care of that for me.

So that’s why I talk about risk with clients.

So that they can get in front of these moments, to the best of their abilities.

So that they can venture down the path of what financial losses would mean to them.

So that they can lead from a place of strength, of humanity, and of intentional values.

And convey to those who matter to them most that money is part of the story, but it’s not the whole story. That we’re humans and that our worth extends well beyond what happens with markets and the economy next.

Man, I hope it helps… even just a little.

— Jonathan