Today’s market got you shook up? If yes, you need a little perspective. Here goes:

What’re you doing tomorrow? This weekend? Next week? This summer? Next Year? The year after that? and after that? and after that?

What were you doing, say, 20 (could say 30, or 10) years ago? Where were you working? Where were you living? What were you driving? What did you do for fun?

What/where were people—in your current age group—working, living, driving, having fun twenty years ago? Would you rather be them then or you now?

Twenty years from now, do you suppose a (your age now)-year old will look back and wish he was you now, or him then?

If you get my drift, you’re a rational optimist. If you don’t, you can offer up chapter, verse, and all the statistics on how—miracles of technology notwithstanding—awful life is today versus two decades ago, and how present trends will ruin the future. All the while—inevitable corrections, bear markets, bubbles, burstings and recessions to come notwithstanding—the average man of the future will, come hell and high water, be living a more fascinating and fulfilling life than even we are today.

The Dow sank 200 points today because traders, with a twenty minute time horizon, are afraid the Fed will steal away their spiked punch bowl. Oh, and sorry, as I type stock index futures are selling off over (it seems) China’s just released (weaker than expected) flash PMI (factory activity). So tomorrow could shake you up a bit as well. That is, unless you believe tomorrow holds the seeds of yet greater advancement of the human condition—notwithstanding all the political garbage blokes like me write about—in which case you won’t even blink…

Bottom (stock market) line: If you’re the rational optimist (great book btw), you gotta own at least of little bit (more if you’re young, less if you’re not young) of tomorrow.