Page 178 - Psychology of Money - Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

Consider the progress of medicine. Looking at the last year will do you
little good. Any single decade won’t do much better. But looking at the last
COBACOBA
50 years will show something extraordinary. For example, the age-adjusted

death rate per capita from heart disease has declined more than 70% since
1965, according to the National Institute of Health.⁶³ A 70% decline in
heart-disease death is enough to save something like half a million

American lives per year. Picture the population of Atlanta saved every year.
But since that progress happened so slowly, it captures less attention than
quick, sudden losses like terrorism, plane crashes, or natural disasters. We
could have a Hurricane Katrina five times a week, every week—imagine
how much attention that would receive—and it would not offset the number

of annual lives saved by the decline in heart disease in the last 50 years.

This same thing applies to business, where it takes years to realize how
important a product or company is, but failures can happen overnight.

And in stock markets, where a 40% decline that takes place in six months
will draw congressional investigations, but a 140% gain that takes place
over six years can go virtually unnoticed.

And in careers, where reputations take a lifetime to build and a single email
to destroy.

The short sting of pessimism prevails while the powerful pull of optimism
goes unnoticed.

This underscores an important point made previously in this book: In

investing you must identify the price of success—volatility and loss amid
the long backdrop of growth—and be willing to pay it.

In 2004 The New York Times interviewed Stephen Hawking, the scientist
whose incurable motor-neuron disease left him paralyzed and unable to talk
at age 21.