During some meetings and discussions on the road, I also had the opportunity to meet some interesting new people. Strangely enough, a number of conversations that started with business, markets, or investments eventually found their way to meditation and the idea of slowing life down a little.
Most came from different traditions and practices than my own, but that hardly mattered. We exchanged experiences, shared perspectives, and learned a great deal from one another. It was a good reminder that while there are many different paths, most people are ultimately trying to solve the same problem: how to live with a little more clarity and a little less unnecessary stress.
Perhaps that is not surprising. The older I get, the more I find that people spend less time asking how to make more money and more time asking how to enjoy the life they have already built. Some of the most rewarding conversations from the trip had nothing to do with markets at all.
Of course, being investors, we still managed to talk about markets eventually. Old habits are hard to break.