Lengthening perspective

Just came back from my Saturday Al-Anon meeting, which is a key moment in my week, and which I had missed two weeks in a row owing to Natalie's Mock Trial and then guys' weekend at the lake. And I have been busy during the week so haven't making meetings then.

So I was kind of in re-entry mode, my mind swimming with a thousand things, many of them professional in origin and, frankly, nature. First off, listening to these people whom I have been getting to know for 6 years now on a more or less weekly business as they shared about health crises and other stuff with spouses or kids, or watching the couple where the guy always brings his wife with dementia to the meetings, but whose condition has progressed so far that he now has to physically help her sit down in her chair, it occurred to me that so much of my job is helping people lengthen their perspective. To think better and more clearly not about what is happening today, this week, or even this year, but what is likely to happen over time period between now and when their next financial goal (college, retirement...) or potential risk factor (health event, war, identity theft, car wreck...) gets in their face. And that the people who are best able to conceptualize and manage long horizons are those with disciplined spiritual practices, deeply-held values, or, possibly, athletic practices. Something else in their lives that transcends the present.

It could be argued that community organizations, and in particular religious communities, are particularly well-suited for offering this perspective because they are so often explicitly thematizing continuity across major life events (births, comings of age, marriages, deaths).

I also, it must be admitted, started thinking about emerging markets (EM) and how active management might theoretically add value vs. passive because of the absence of overarching regulators to encourage the development of strong corporate governance. I.e. how index funds channeling money into immature markets might be sending dumb money into the hands of scoundrels. It made me want, on the one hand, to reach out to my friend who is head of retail distribution at BlackRock to ask about how they are handling governance for EM, but also I think it validates paying a little extra for Environmental-Social-Governance ETFs for Emerging Markets because they provide this influence inexpensively.

Thankfully, is a three-day weekend so some of this train of thought may die back a little.