Trapped in a zero gravity environment

Warren Buffett has a mantra to help wealthy parents whose children expect to become heirs to a fortune.

If you want them to avoid laziness, he says, leave your kids enough money to feel like they could do anything, but not so much money that they could do nothing.

Even for people who don’t have kids, this insight is brilliant. Because the last thing anybody needs is to become trapped in a zero gravity environment. It’s an existence with no resistance. There’s nothing substantial to sink your teeth into.

And in the same way that an astronaut loses muscle mass and bone density while floating around in space, somebody with nothing to push against loses motivation and a sense of meaning.

Which is fine, by the way. There is no rule that says everybody has to become a hyper motivated meaning making machine all of the time, or any of the time.

But if somebody is struggling with lack of fulfillment in their life, hoping to reignite the hunger in their soul, one of the root causes worth investigating might be a lack of gravity.

Reminds me of a woman from my old writers group. Thanks to some fortuitous investments about ten years ago, her savings account was approaching seven figures. She had hit a good lick, and we were all thrilled for her.

But the tragic part was, even though she had many aspirations around doing art and creating social change, and even though a part of her wanted to do everything, since she had so much money, she ended up doing nothing.

She became locked in a zero gravity environment.

Where in your life do you lack gravity?