Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…For me, the things that I’m anxious about, I usually spend the summer in California. I wonder if that’s going to be possible. My son’s getting married in August in Australia. That seems uncertain. A good friend of mine’s son was scheduled to be married. They’ve just postpone the wedding. So those kinds of things they weigh on me a little bit. The way I try to deal with that for me is it’s just an adventure. I don’t to minimize it, it’s just part of the incredible experience. A life that we have this experience together with my … The two sons are home with my wife. This is just something that we get to experience. I try to look at it that way. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s obviously going to have cultural, social, economic and political implications, which I hope we’ll talk about. I’m just trying to … Here’s the hardest part. I was talking to somebody yesterday about this who’s worried about her aging parents. I’m worried about my 87 year old mom who just lost her husband and isn’t as worried about this as I am for a lot of reasons. But I think the challenge is you’re not in charge. Most of my life, I’m in charge and I love that feeling and the acceptance of the idea that you can’t control your mom’s safety and you can’t control when your son’s wedding will actually be, it’s just hard to deal with. I’m not used to that. Don’t like that feeling. So for me, it’s trying to cope with that. How about you? With that in mind, I’ve tried to stay as busy as possible and in fact I don’t think I’ve ever, ever been busier in my entire life. Reading materials, writing, passing along advice, just processing information every day feels like an enormous sort of rush of things I have to do. Even though in the sense of my physical surroundings, it’s quite static. So I think that’s given me maybe an illusory sense of control, but it’s made it bearable for me. And again, I don’t think my personal mood has changed that much other than just feeling much, much busier. Well, about a week ago, my wife was a little concerned with how focused I was on it, I was on the whole issue. And I realized this. That’s just the way I deal with it. That’s part of my anxiety control mechanism. It’s just, I think my human reaction to it and it sounds like it’s yours too.…

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