Saturday, April 24, 2021

Enough

John Bogle, the Vanguard founder who passed away in 2019, once told a story about money that highlights something we don’t think about enough: 

 At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch- 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.” 

Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word—stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate.