Be first.
Be smarter.
Or cheat.
--Movie -- Margin Call
I am reminded of a tale about a powerful king who called his wise men together and directed them to prepare a compilation of all the wisdom in the world. The wise men worked for many months, frantically researching and discussing a wide variety of subjects. Finally they presented the king with ten volumes of information that they were confident would please him. The king perused a few pages of one volume, then said "this is far too much material. Surely you can give me the wisdom of the world in less than ten volumes." So the king sent his wise men back to work on summarizing the wisdom contained in their ten volumes. Again it took many months, but when they were done they had reduced their findings to a single volume. Even more confident than the first time around, the wise men handed the king their work, where upon he again perused a few pages. Shaking his head with dissatisfaction, he looked up and said, "still far too much. I have no intention of reading all this material. Surely the wisdom of the world can be reduced to less than a volume." The wise men, frustrated by the king's latest request, decided to go to extremes and reduce their findings to one page. This took them only about a month, and again they were confident that the king would be pleased. To their utter amazement, however, he was not. "Still too much material," bellowed the king. "What I want is the wisdom of the world summarized in one sentence." The wise men gulped. How could all the wisdom of the world possibly be reduced to a single sentence? The good thing about this seemingly impossible task was that they knew this had to be the end of the matter. Either they succeeded in accomplishing the seemingly impossible -- summarize the wisdom of the world in one sentence -- or be prepared to answer to a very angry king. The task proved to be daunting to say the least, but, after considerable reflection and debate, they actually succeeded in condensing the one page into a single sentence. Proudly, they approached the the throne and said to the king, "your majesty , we have at last summarized all the wisdom of the world in one sentence," where upon the wisest of the wise men handed the king a single sheet of parchment. the king looked at the page before him , nodded his head approvingly, then read the sentence aloud: THERE'S NO FREE LUNCH.. Sooner or later we learn this truth and come to understand that there is a price for everything in life. There's a price for working hard; there's a price for not working hard enough. There's a price for saving for the future; there's a price for spending all your money now. There's a price for having children; there's a price for not having children. There's a price for having friends; there's a price for not having friends. There's a price for taking the right action; there's a price for taking the wrong action; and, yes there's a price for taking no action at all. In other words , you always have to give up something in order to get something in return. The empirical evidence suggest that even though most adults understand this principle on an intellectual level, they do not accept it on an emotional level. This results in actions that rational people describe as irrational, and irrational actions always produce bad consequences. Another way to describe price paying is to view life as a never ending series of trade-offs. No matter how attractive a person, a job, a deal, or a situation looks to you, make it a habit to open your eyes to the trade-offs. This is particularly important when something looks "too good to be true." Never forget that there's no such thing as a perfect person, a perfect job, a perfect deal, or a perfect situation.
--Robert J. Ringer
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