Life is a joker.

I heard “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world”
and thought I understood it–I knew the math, after all–until I
read the rest of the quote, years later, “He who understands
it earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”

And, yes, I’ve been paying it.

I heard “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself”
when I was in college and was not so impressed–it sounded like
something Confucius would say, only much less eloquent. Many
years later, I learned the second part: “Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man."

Well, I had spent the first half of my life trying desperately to be
reasonable and to fit in.