It was a stroke of luck that I came across the words and lives of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger in the very early part of my life as an investor. I was not searching for heroes. But encountering their work felt like someone had turned on a light in a dark room I didn’t know I was sitting in. And suddenly, I could see myself a little more clearly.
When you observe a person carefully, without trying to idolise them but just to understand them, you start to see what living with clarity actually looks like. But here’s where the trouble also sneaks in: the moment we elevate someone on a pedestal, we stop seeing clearly ourselves. The moment we start imitating, the understanding is gone.
So, the point isn’t to become them. It’s to notice what made their way of living ring true.
Like, from Munger, I learned what it means to look straight at reality. No sugarcoating. No stories we tell ourselves to feel better. He showed me that most confusion is homemade. And that clear thinking is often just removing what’s unnecessary, instead of adding more.
Buffett taught me something softer. It was about patience and steadiness of heart that doesn’t get eaten alive by envy or resentment. He showed me that a meaningful life doesn’t have to be dramatic. Sometimes it’s just showing up every day and doing the simple things… again and again… for years, without worrying about what the world thinks of you.
In the farewell letter he published yesterday before he says he’s “going quiet,” he wrote:
Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.
If you look into this deeply, you realise he’s not saying “become someone else.” He’s saying: pay attention (“choose”) to what calls to you.
It’s because the people we admire are simply a reflection of something we sense as true within ourselves. The care with which we choose our influences is the care with which we shape our inner world.
And so, I don’t see the “emulation” he speaks about as copying. I see it as the movement of our own thoughts, our own reactions, and letting what is false fall away.
So when I say I was lucky to learn from Buffett and Munger, I don’t mean I tried to live their lives. At least, not 100%. I mean they helped me understand my own life.
Munger is gone. Now, Buffett is slowly stepping back. And I feel some pain in that. I won’t call it grief, but just the awareness that a book I’ve carried and loved with all my heart all these years is about to come to an end. Or like a room I used to walk into all the time… and now the door is closing.
So yes, Buffett will go quiet. And that chapter is closing. But what he and Munger gave doesn’t end. It just becomes ours to carry now. In how we think. In how we live. In how we invest. And in how we treat the world and ourselves.
One Purpose. A Better Life.
“This is a masterpiece.”
—Morgan Housel, Author, Psychology of Money
“Discover the extraordinary within.”
—Manish Chokhani, Director, Enam Holdings
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