A Story of Courage and Hope from the Life of Charlie Munger

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First issues first. I want you and your loved ones a really joyful, peaceable, and blessed 2023.

I’m grateful to have you ever share this journey with me prior to now, and stay up for persevering with our connection within the years forward.

Now for a narrative from the lifetime of Charlie Munger, who’s 99 years previous right this moment.

I have shared this story numerous instances over time, as a result of every time I discuss or write about it, I expertise a way of inside peace and power. And so, even if in case you have learn this story earlier, learn it once more right this moment as you start taking your first steps into this model new yr.

This story dates lengthy earlier than Charlie was wealthy and well-known, and earlier than he had such a big and joyful household –

Picture Supply: Poor Charlie’s Almanack; {Photograph} is of Charlie celebrating his forty-fifth marriage ceremony anniversary together with his household in 2001

The story dates to 1953 when Charlie, then 29 years previous, received divorced from his spouse of eight years. Divorce had an enormous social stigma connected at the moment and it was the primary blow for Munger.

His spouse additionally received virtually all the pieces within the separation, together with the home. Charlie’s pals revealed that he moved into “dreadful” circumstances after this divorce.

He, nevertheless, summoned all his braveness, labored loopy all week to get better the cash misplaced within the divorce. This was, nevertheless, only the start and life needed to nonetheless check him out additional.

A yr later, Charlie’s 8-year-old son Teddy, was recognized with leukemia (blood most cancers). He scoured the medical group however rapidly found the illness was incurable. He and his ex-wife sat within the leukemia ward with the opposite dad and mom and grandparents in numerous phases of watching their youngsters waste away. Additionally, provided that there was no medical insurance coverage in these days, Charlie paid for all the pieces out-of-pocket.

As per his pals, every day he would take Teddy to the hospital for checkups whereas caring for his different two youngsters and working towards regulation. These months have been the hardest as he noticed his son rising weaker nearing his loss of life.

Based on his buddy Rick Guerin, Charlie would go to the hospital when his son “was in mattress and slowly dying, maintain him for some time, then exit strolling the streets of Pasadena crying.”

One yr after the prognosis, Teddy Munger handed away on the tender age of 9, leaving Charlie heartbroken.

Charlie was 31 years previous, divorced, broke, and burying his younger son. It might have been tempting to simply give all of it up and switch to vices (alcohol, medicine) as so many individuals round him had performed at the moment. However Charlie was not that man and he stored going.

Years later, he mirrored on the inside turmoil that he might’ve given in to and mentioned –

Usually talking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity will get fairly near paranoia…Each time you discover your drifting into self-pity, I don’t care what the trigger, your baby might be dying from most cancers, self-pity is just not going to enhance the scenario. It’s a ridiculous approach to behave.

Life can have horrible blows, horrible blows, unfair blows, it doesn’t matter. Some individuals get better and others don’t. There I feel the perspective of Epictetus is the most effective. He thought that each mischance in life was a chance to behave properly. Each mischance in life was a chance to be taught one thing and that your responsibility was to not be immersed in self-pity, however to make the most of the horrible blow in a constructive vogue. That may be a excellent thought.

The facility of that speech is extra memorable to me as a result of Charlie by no means talked about the truth that his personal son died of most cancers.

Anyhow, life’s checks continued for Charlie, and on the age of 52, he developed cataracts. A failed surgical procedure left him blind in a single eye and brought about problems like most cancers. His blind eye pained so intensely that he couldn’t rise up. Determined to finish it, he received the physician to take away his complete eye.

Now, if you end up an obsessive reader like Charlie, dropping your capability to see would appear to be a jail sentence. Nonetheless, he was undeterred. He instructed somebody near him, “It’s time for me to be taught braille.”

Some of the life-changing books I have ever read is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. The guide is a chronicle by Frankl of his experiences as a German Nazi focus camp inmate throughout World Warfare II.

On this guide, Frankl describes his psychotherapeutic methodology, which concerned figuring out a function in life to really feel positively about, after which immersively imagining that final result.

The central theme of Frankl’s guide is ‘survival.’ Though he witnessed and skilled horror, the guide focuses much less on the small print of his personal expertise and extra on how his time underneath Nazi rule confirmed him the human capability to outlive and endure in opposition to all odds.

As Frankl wrote, he noticed the bottom elements of humanity whereas within the camps. He noticed fellow prisoners promoted to be in-camp guards turning on their fellow prisoners. He watched as they beat their lifeless, malnourished campmates. He watched sadistic guards treating them as in the event that they have been decrease than animals. However he additionally noticed people rising up like saints above all of it.

The half that impacted me essentially the most from the guide was this –

After we are not in a position to change a scenario, we’re challenged to vary ourselves…Every thing may be taken from a person however one factor: the final of the human freedoms — to decide on one’s perspective in any given set of circumstances, to decide on one’s personal means.

Life (investing included) isn’t simple. And in contrast to, what we think about in each situations of triumphs and disasters, life isn’t supposed to maneuver in a straight line of happiness and smiles, or unhappiness and ache. It’s not supposed to remain the identical, identical to you’re not supposed to remain the identical.

Life is evolving and altering. It’s a fixed surge of ups and downs, twists and turns, and as Rudyard Kipling mentioned, “…triumphs and disasters.” Like you’ve your joyful and blissful moments, you’re alleged to really feel ache, get damage, and expertise losses often. And a few of them may be actually dangerous!

Now, that doesn’t imply that you just deserve each little bit of the unhappiness, defeats, and tragedies that life arms over to you. It’s simply a part of the journey that we’re strolling via. It’s simply a part of what makes us human.

You see, after we learn the fairytale tales of the likes of Munger and Buffett’s lives, and people of the numerous different individuals we expect are joyful and affluent right this moment, it’s simple to imagine they’ve risen to success on one upward, clean trajectory. However what we don’t see is the years of laborious work, sweat and blood, typically tragedies, it has taken to get to the place they’re right this moment.

Charlie has been in a position to get forward because of his persistence, carrying on after he was divorced, broke, burying his son, and dropping a watch.

You will need to keep in mind this whenever you assume life has been unfair to you and also you take pleasure in self-pity.

Earlier than I shut, right here is Charlie’s reply when a shareholder requested him within the 2013 AGM of Every day Journal Corp how does one get better from the reverses in investing and never dwell a lot on them –

You understand what Rudyard Kipling mentioned? Deal with these two imposters simply the identical success and failure. After all, there’s going to be some failure in making the right choices. No person bats a thousand. I feel it’s vital to evaluation your previous stupidities so you’re much less prone to repeat them, however I’m not gnashing my enamel over it or struggling or enduring it. I regard it as completely regular to fail and make dangerous choices. I feel the tragedy in life is to be so timid that you just don’t play laborious sufficient so you’ve some reverses.

If there may be one huge lesson we will take from Charlie’s life, other than the one on being a studying machine, it’s that we should decide ourselves up after each meltdown we undergo (in investing included). We should additionally know that each one our struggles and all our failures will lead us to expertise one thing better and lead us to be somebody higher.

Then let’s start another time. And discover the braveness to face up, and face right this moment with simply as a lot hope as we had yesterday.

P.S. Books to learn on Charlie’s life and work – Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Damn Right, Seeking Wisdom, Charlie Munger – The Complete Investor