$ \textbf{Choices} $ Poverty and abundance are usually imagined as opposite states, but each bends the owner's will to its own logic. A lack of capital can narrow our freedom of choice--labor to put food on the table. It forecloses high degrees of freedom. Conversely, abundance imposes the _paradox of choice_. When every path is open, necessity takes its leave, and paralysis sets in where ambition should. $ \text{Whether as a farmer or artist or teacher or the like--leading a good life } $ $ \text{is not just hard, but risky.} $ $ \text{You stake your all on this throw.} $ $ \text{Each of us must choose. You cannot evade this choice.} $ Choice always carries risk, and risk has two faces. Material risk is the risk of losing what one has, and at the bottom, of not surviving at all. Existential risk is the risk of staking one's life on the wrong thing. The two are usually entangled and together narrow the field of view; fewer paths exist which balance material necessities and existential vocation. Poverty makes the choice for you. Abundance untangles the risks and ignores the material one, leaving the existential question standing alone, unhelped by circumstance. The heir, freed from the question of how to survive, inherits the harder one: what to live for. No collection of friends, parents, mentors, or books can answer that question; and the chance of failure always remains. Paths towards success are often not in our control. So our emotions must be. No amount of wrong choices will keep you from making more.