Risk lives in the unknown

I took this week off work. My wife and I stayed local. New York never runs out of things to do.

So we finally visited the 9/11 Museum, a place I’d parked on my to-do list for too long. I’ve seen every documentary about the attacks. I remember exactly where I was that day. It was a Tuesday during a school holiday in Argentina. I was playing tennis with friends when one of them ran over and said, “Some towers fell down.”

Inside the museum, a video played a local newscast from that morning. The reporter said, “Good morning; sixty-four degrees at eight. It’s Tuesday, September eleventh. It’s going to be a beautiful day with sunshine throughout. Really a splendid September day. The afternoon temperature is about eighty degrees…”

That was shocking. In that moment, I realized how unprepared we are for the unknown. Many of us think we have our lives under control. In reality, we don’t.

The world wasn’t prepared for 9/11, just as we weren’t ready for COVID, Ukraine’s war, or Hamas.

Risk lives in the unknown. Once we identify a risk, we can plan, mitigate, and adapt. We transform unknowns into controllable inputs. But the biggest risks remain invisible until they hit.

The less we know about something, the riskier it becomes.

Some risks lie entirely outside our control, but many do not. We can focus on what we do know and leverage our controllable inputs. They’re the levers that help us reduce risk. For example:

- Be prepared financially.
- Stay in good shape.
- Build a supportive network.
- Keep learning.
- Stay genuinely humble.

Amigo, this is playing the long-term game with the cards you control.