Land of the Morning Calm (晨静之地, 朝の静けさの国, 아침의 고요한 땅)

Hello Darkness, my old friend.... A Simon and Garfunkel song called The Sound of Silence. It describes the pain I've felt again this first quarter of 2025 in the stock market, the pain of being complacent and not selling at the all-time highs in December and January and letting all the gains from the last year or so slip back to where it's at now, 20% or so down depending on which stock you own, and being way too overleveraged with Nvidia, a great stock to own on the way up (from September 2022 to January 2025, it went up more than 1000%! A 10x gainer, but on the way down it's also dreadfully painful. The good news is I've sustained these kind of losses before where I feared for my sanity and financial livelihood only to bounce back the way the US stock market has a tendency of doing, but it might be a few months, a year, maybe a couple years before it goes back to that high, especially since the "Trump put" is no longer in the market where the market always believed he would be a backstop to any serious losses during his first term. That doesn't seem to be in place anymore especially with the new tariffs. Always have to remind myself you should act the opposite of your emotions: if you're feeling great about the market and want to add more to it, that's probably a good time to sell (should have done that a month and a half ago!) and if you're feeling terrible and want to take everything out, that's probably the time to buy. I don't think I've hit that point yet, which means unfortunately there's probably more ways to go before the market bottoms. "The Sound of Silence" can be a very calming feeling, especially in the digital world: we cram so much into our brains and into our ears as soon as we wake up that taking a break from that can be therapeutic and a de-stress on its own, especially in the morning. I wish I could just start off every morning with 30 minutes to an hour of just silence and just reading, absorbing the world and not being in a rush. That's probably similar to the idea of "Land of the Morning Calm," the nickname of South Korea which dates back to before it had split with North Korea. It came up on Jeopardy today along with the nickname "Hermit Kingdom" as neighboring countries, and the 3 contestants all guessed wrong answers, partly it's because they were all white men. I don't necessarily like some of the backlash against white men in today's society, but sometimes it is nice to have some diversity in culture and background in a group setting or in a contestant of cultural values like Jeopardy. I feel probably like Black Americans or Native Americans or other Asian Americans or other immigrants do when they watch Jeopardy: sometimes the clues really do tend towards a mostly white culture audience. And when do they do add Asia-specific clues or clues about black culture, they tend to get missed. I also grew up in that white culture like read Winnie the Pooh, Sherlock Holmes stories, watched Mighty Ducks movies and Independence Day as kid, learned about American history, followed American politics, participated in baseball and basketball and football, so I very much grew up in the white culture, but I sometimes wonder if Americans can't broaden their horizons a bit and not be so American-centric: every other country seems to know a lot about the US ( I watch quiz shows and they all ask about American movies, music, TV, food, etc.) but ask America about other countries and it's just not part of the culture lexicon, outside of maybe some knowledge about Britain, Canada, maybe just Parsia and Rome and high culture in Europe. People still can't get China, Korea, and Japan straight; it's like one big mass of Asians for Americans. Some would say our current President and his administration are making that even more of a priority by shutting down trade with other countries, making America first, limiting immigrants, demonizing allies, etc. It's like thinking America is the one and only country and we shouldn't have to deal with anybody else. That's not an attitude I like about America, and indeed I wouldn't have arrived in this country had America not opened itself to my parents. Maybe America can just be a little humbler and not think we're the best, take a lesson from the Land of the Morning Calm and be the Landing of the Trying to be Calm towards others.