Of Decaying Time Value

“At age 16 or 17, I had wanted to be another Einstein; at 21, I would have been happy to be another Feynman; at 24, a future T.D. Lee would have sufficed. By 1976, sharing an office with other postdoctoral researchers at Oxford, I realized that I had reached the point where I merely envied the postdoc in the office next door because he had been invited to give a seminar in France. In much the same way, by a process options theorists call time decay, financial stock options lose their potential as they approach their expiration.”

- My Life as a Quant, by Emanuel Derman

That, is eerily and very unfortunately true.

Expressed in a different way, is how in Pixar’s movie Up, the pages for “Stuff I’m going to do” in Ellie’s adventure book were intentionally left empty and full of promise when she was a child, but were later filled in (probably when she approached death) with pictures from her wedding and snapshots from day-to-day activities. The movie romanticised her simple life, but it too made the point of how promises of grand adventure eventually degenerate to naught as we realize our mediocre, non-high performance lives.

About a month after tossing the mortarboard, I’m facing it too – I too am a stock option losing time value. I enter the working world as an enthusiastic fresh graduate, a greenhorn in the field but eager to discover and correct every imperfection in the current systems and operations. I dream about making radical contributions and going to graduate school. Yet I can’t help but see myself, in years to come, as another one of my jaded seniors, shunning responsibility, being contented with the status quo and seeking only to complete assigned tasks even if it means cutting corners. Maybe, I won’t make it to graduate school.

In the culture I was brought up in, envy was taught to be avoided like a vice, while contentedness is  wise. We were also taught to respect traditions and our seniors, and that humility is a well-liked virtue. Should I then, settle into a life of contentedness and simplicity, and abandon the exhilaration that comes with greater purposes and accomplishments? If the answer is no, how then do I go about seeking purpose and making a change?

Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing

Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing

Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty

What would life be?

Without a song or a dance what are we?

So I say thank you for the music

For giving it to me

- “Thank you for the music”, by ABBA