To a New Road Ahead

Dr. King, the minister, says in 1963: “Free at last.”

And so, I am. Sprung out, free, and searching, and with this new stride running wild through life’s two worlds — the one Within and the one Outside — having now just grasped that both are too beautiful to leave unseen, too warmly endowed with meaning to leave unsearched, and each so sweetly teaching us about the other. Free not only to be my-Self but to make him, and to walk newly-wedded down the aisle with these ideals — Curiosity, the great and earnest Search, and Love.

A lifelong monogamy to this idea that has swept up in my spirit: that I will honor my-Self: and if that honoring is in ocean depths, I will swim; if that honoring is on high hills, I will climb; if that honoring is in labor, I will work; if that honoring is in war, I will fight. If so honoring my-Self comes with great words, I will belt them out like a rioter until sweat beads up on my brow. And if it comes in silence, I will be as quiet as the bird that floats above a breaking dawn. And in all of this honoring of my-Self — comes my highest honoring of others — my highest honoring of You.

Vlad Lenin, the revolutionary, says in 1917: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

This last week was one of those for me: a revolution within, a tectonic texture change in my being, a great splash of paint upon my canvas — obscuring what was there before, making me something indelibly new. This week — to have met such wonderful people, to be in the presence of such astonishing worldly beauty, to have been nourished and actualized and guided in the way I was — I will be grateful for it forever.

Bittersweet pangs of pain are there, too: progression, as all know, requires change, and much called “change” is actually — loss — the passing away of old things to make room for new ones, the setting down of old covenants to create and keep new ones. How much sadness is wrapped inside the ecstasy of this process has been moving and humbling for me: the tears that fall on the beloved old book as its last pages are turned — the leaning forward to pick up the new one — the smile as its cover is cracked open — all in the same breathtaking motion.

Bonnie Raitt, the singer, sings in 1991: “You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t.”

My curiosity and love for the markets have waned in the last year. Nine years I have given to this vocation. At the beginning, I set goals, as one does when beginning. Then, I went on to achieve them, which is what the lucky of us go on to do, somewhere along the way. I sat down nine years ago at my desk in full dedication to this craft, and it seems like only recently that I’ve looked back up from it. And when I did, I noticed the questions that went unanswered while my craft so joyously and rewardingly took my focus: “What else is out there? What is the purpose of what I see around me? And who *am* I, as understood as more than just my method?” I have no regrets about the path I’ve walked: I would only feel regret if I ignored my duty to answer these questions for myself now:

Like sharks streaking through the blood behind a wounded whale, these questions began to chase me around the world, to ache within me and press on me like weight. My first reaction was to clench and grasp harder onto the thing I knew and would keep me safe (my trading practice). And so for about a year, I poured myself back into my vocation, only to find that same hunger unsated, the same restless questions well-alive in my heart. And somewhere inside that season, I began to see that these questions weren’t sharks in the water at all — they were rays of light from above its surface. Not predators at my back, but lights for the path forward. And that what I needed to do was let go, to loosen my grip on the known.

Surrendering to this fully may well be the most difficult and scariest thing I’ll ever do, but it seems too clear to me that it’s a vital condition of the progress and perspective that I covet so dearly. I would not give back one moment of my nine-year commitment to this incredible craft, and although it has brought me more than my heart could have most wildly wished at the onset, I must push off from it, like a boat from a pier. I can no more alter these new desires in my heart than I can the patterns of stars in the night sky above Spain. I’ve come to acknowledge that this is my True path forward, the one my heart and intuition have invested in and endorsed with their passion. I see now that that is the road worth walking, the life worth living.

And so Nikkos Savas, the trader, says to you in 2022:

That I looked up at the crest of the wave (the wave of worldly success), and all I could think about was not wanting to die in its wake; that when my road forked, I saw on one side the top of the world, but on the other side — the life worth living.

The choice is not easy but it is Right.

From the world of music, which I walked with a six-stringed friend, to the world of capital markets and the inward exploration it so gratefully caused in me, and unto whatever comes next: I say farewell to the things behind, and I surrender in welcome to the things ahead — to the search of Truth — and the spreading of Luck.

I’m not leaving you — I’ll be right here, just around the bend.

Searching.