The Rainwater Prophecy - December 26, 2005

The Rainwater Prophecy - December 26, 2005: "Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type--at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet--and it's getting closer to the edge.... And then he'll interrupt himself: 'Look, I'm not predicting anything,' he'll say. 'That's when you get a little kooky-sounding.' "

Well worth a read. Please, as a personal favor to me, read that article all the way to the end. Saying something with passion - and doing something - are two very different things. My previous husband, when I was very sick, would leave me home alone without help or support, and go out with his friends. When I got better and was able to socialize with them, too, they all told me "gosh, he loves you so much." Saying it to other people, versus showing me that he loved me, are two worlds apart. He loved the idea of loving me a heck of a lot more than he loved the actual mundane process of keeping love alive through life's hills and valleys. Now he's an ex-husband. (And he's a great guy and he's a bastard and there's a whole lot more to the story, but that's the part that illustrates this particular point.)

There's walking the walk, and there's talking the talk. When a person gets rich off their brains, it implies some degree of intelligence, luck, and understanding how things work. It implies they might have a clue. If they walk the walk, too, it's worth a listen before you dismiss their ideas as preposterous. It's worth going beyond listening to them, maybe doing a little more research, before you make a call on whether there's anything there worth thinking about.

And if the guy is just a total crackpot, then I still think the description of his life - how his wife accepts his crackpot-ness, how he lives part of the time on an old family farm in a very poor town despite having multiple homes and billions of dollars, things like that - it's an interesting window on how at least some rich people live, in stark contrast to the popular image of how rich people live.