Warren Buffet on Gratitude
Be Grateful
There are roughly 6 Billion people in the world. Imagine the worlds biggest
lottery where every one of those 6 Billion people was required to draw
a ticket. Printed on each ticket were the circumstances in which they
would be required to live for the rest of their lives.
Printed on each ticket were the following items:
– Sex
– Race
– Place of Birth (Country, State, City, etc.)
– Type of Government
– Parents names, income levels & occupations
– IQ (a normal distribution, with a 66% chance of your IQ being 100 & a standard deviation of 20)
– Weight, height, eye color, hair color, etc.
– Personality traits, temperment, wit, sense of humor
– Health risks
If you are reading this blog right now, I’m guessing the ticket you drew when you were born wasn’t too bad. The
probability of you drawing a ticket that has the favorable
circumstances you are in right now is incredibly small (say, 1 in 6
billion). The probability of you being born as your prefereable sex, in
the United States, with an average IQ, good health and supportive
parents is miniscule.
Warren spent about an hour talking about
how grateful we should all be for the circumstances we were born into
and for the generous ticket we’ve been offered in life. He said that we
should not take it for granted or think that it is the product of
something we did – we just drew a
lucky ticket. (He also pointed out that his skill of "allocating
capital" would be useless if he would have been born in poverty in
Bangladesh.)
From Darren Johnson: Stuff I Think.