The Zurich Axioms By Max Gunther
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Avoid putting down roots. They impede motion.
In the lexicon of modern mental-health theory, rootlessness is in the same category as worry. Both are felt to be bad for you.
It is certainly nice in many ways to have roots. To feel you belong in some familiar place amid old friends and good neighbors: this can bring a glow to the heart. The opposites of this cozy situation – rootlessness, a state of drifting, alienation – seem cold and uncomfortable by comparison. Undoubtedly that is why most shrinks believe we ought to have roots.
But you should approach this roots business warily. If you let it impinge on your financial life, it can cost you a lot of money. The more earnestly you seek that feeling of being surrounded by the old, the familiar, and the comfortable, the less successful you are likely to be as a speculator.
The Axiom doesn’t refer only to geographic mobility or the lack of it – the old-hometown kind of rootedness. That is part of it for many middle-class people, especially those trying to make a buck in the real estate game. But it is only a part. What the Axiom means more than anything else is a state of mind, a way of thinking, a habitual method of organizing your life.
The message comes in two halves, each covered by a minor axiom.