DQ

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams – this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness – and maddest of all: to see life as it is and not as it should be!”

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

This quote comes from the Spanish novel Don Quixote, written in 1605 by the above author. It is the story of a Spanish lower-level nobleman who reads to obsession too many chivalric romance novels and begins to believe that he is destined to save the world from giants, dragons, and those who dare to harm the common man/woman. DQ asks a poor farm laborer, Sancho Panza, to join him in this quest with the reward of granting him a Governorship – a power DQ believed he had but did not.

The novel is filled with stories of slaying giants (windmills), staying in fine castles (local pubs), and saving fair maidens (local barmaids). It is a story of the optimism and illusion of DQ and the pessimism and reality of his “squire” Sancho Panza. DQ was living out his dream only to fall prey to reality at the end. Sancho Panza went along for the ride as the realist he was yet changed at the end to become a believer in this grand quest. The optimist became the realist, and the realist became the optimist.

The reason for this quarterly letter is not to try and turn an optimist into a pessimist. It is a simple reminder that what we read or watch on tv/social media can begin to consume us. Wear down even the most positive of those among us. Feed the pessimists more fuel for their never-ending search to find the bad in the good.

The team at the High Net Worth Advisory Group are realists who do their best to see life as it should be. We imagine a world where the future will be brighter than the past. The future will be filled with space travel, self-driving cars, answers to difficult medical questions, robots that will increase the quality of our lives, opportunities for our next gen workers that we have not even thought of, and artificial intelligence that improves our lives. The pessimist will say that this all comes at a cost. The optimist says that any great transformative change comes at a short-term cost but to longer-term benefit. Our world has gone from traveling by foot to horse to train to car to plane to rocket ship. Technology allows us to communicate throughout the world. We are living our best life now and the next generation will live it even better. Turn off the news/noise of the day and imagine a world where you are spending your life saving those you love most from the pessimism (giants and dragons) of the day. Don Quixote would be proud! Sancho Panza (The High Net Worth Advisory Group) stands at the ready to join you!