What words don't teach us

I was just reading a powerful passage about Charlie Munger's view that there is a huge advantage in being early and sticking with it. This idea is not novel; I've read it many times articulated in different ways across various business leaders, parables, and pithy quotes. So have many of the people around me. I imagine most people are like me: we read it and immediately say, yes, that makes sense and that is exactly what we ought to do.

However, what is striking to me, is that any time I've worked on something difficult and tried to "stick with it" when it got tough, I and many of the very same people start a line of questioning and commentary of "how do you know it's going to work?", "when will you be more practical?" or "maybe you should do something else..." And these thoughts may very well be right and in fact have been right many a time. But they also have been wrong.

It's interesting, then, how Mr. Munger's words proved elusive when perhaps I needed them the most. It made me think of what words don't teach us.

They don't teach us what it feels like to live them; to "be early" and to "stick with it" is beautiful looking back with victory assured but in the moment, when success is uncertain, it can be very painful. It is as if when we read words -- particularly words that are beautiful, that speak to bravery and courage -- we imagine our fearful worldviews do not exist and nothing will go wrong (maybe because that is the only time we are willing to be brave... not that we could call it bravery at that point).

If words could teach us what it truly felt to live them, perhaps we would feel much more differently towards them. We would probably be far less enthusiastic and far more skeptical. For in practice, when beautiful words meet reality, we are forced to reckon with what we had wishfully -- knowingly or unknowingly -- idealized.