An open letter to my first grandchild:
Dear Samantha,I don't know why everybody says grandparents are soppy and prejudiced. After taking my first look at you, I think any objective observer, even one wholly unrelated, would have to conclude that you were about the cutest thing on the planet. No bias there: just honest reporting.
But I would lose my credentials as a professional deep thinker if I did not now pause to offer you some sage advice on economics, finance and other subjects of profound importance to one of your obvious promise.
So my first piece of grandfatherly advice is to be wary of all such advice. One of the first things you are likely to notice, if you keep those gorgeous at-least-temporarily-blue eyes open, is that people who add years do not necessarily add knowledge. Some people travel around the world and see nothing; others journey through life with all their biases intact.
You, on the other hand, are in a marvelous position to observe and decide for yourself. You are embarking on the five best learning years of your life, to be followed immediately by the second-best five years. And you are lucky to have bright, loving and supportive parents.
My wish for you is that, while nurturing the proudly individual personality that is every human's right and destiny, you will develop both your heart and your mind. Some foolish grown-ups act as if those two goals are somehow in conflict, but the reverse is true; neither can be fully achieved without the other.
"Love is all you need," sang the bards of the '60s, but they were wrong, as the ensuing years so cruelly proved. You also need intelligence, and marketable skills, and a willingness to show up and be productive, sometimes on days when you would much rather still be rocking in your cradle. So I hope you will indeed follow your heart, because that oddly will often point the way your head should be going, but I hope you will also understand that part of the educational process is to make yourself economically salable - rather than counting, as so many silly people did, on the empty promise of some politician to guarantee them a good job.
You may regard such career advice as premature. (The Japanese, generally thought of as the most serious of nations, believe in indulging babies totally until they are 5, then throwing them headlong into a competitive society. Count me as an American gradualist on that one.) My intention is not to pretend that you must decide between rocket science and brain surgery before you are weaned; it is only to suggest that the earnestness with which you undertake your education is not unrelated to what will come your way later on.
And I hope you will, along the way, gain an understanding of money that so frequently eludes most people. It should be neither your obsession nor the object of your ideological disdain. Money is a tool, useful for buying things (including stuffed pandas and bassinets) and capable of doing much good in this world, including keeping you off the welfare rolls. You will eventually even want to start saving some of it, though the size of your allowance may seem to make this a discouragingly difficult prospect for a while. (Avoid those fellows who come up to you on the playground and offer to give you a "hot tip"; such infants are not to be trusted, now or in the future.)
Most of all, I hope that as your economic knowledge increases along with all the other things you will be absorbing, that you will learn to keep envy in check. It is the most destructive emotion, in economics as in other human activities. Ignore those whose lives are crippled by bitterness toward the success of others; keep focusing, instead, on your own beautiful star.
Meanwhile, though, take a few days off and enjoy life. It has a lot to offer to a smart kid who will keep her eyes open in between naps. But you know all that already, Samantha; after all, you weren't born yesterday. You were born last Thursday.
Lots of love,
GRANDPA