After witnessing years of hype, angst, ups and downs – good and bad, terrible and excellent…humbling and exciting, it struck me that the masses may be missing the point sometimes.

I know we cover this often in the morning reminders but this point may ultimately be getting missed by too many:

Broken is better.

Think About It For a Moment

Imagine for a second what would happen tomorrow if you walked into your office and the boss said,

“Hey, good news, there are no customers that want or need anything else. The service is perfect, the results are perfect, the product line is perfect. Everyone has exactly what they need. There are no complaints. There is nothing to fix. No more ideas needed for any further wishes to solve or gaps to fill or advances t make. Now go ahead and get back to work.”

Doing what exactly?

Missing The Big Picture

Since the beginning of time, our evolution has counted on one dynamic misunderstood by most: we needed problems to fix.

We needed mountains to climb, roadblocks to get around, wishes to fill, demands to be met. We needed solutions, fixes, do-overs, remakes and better service.

Without all of those things – FIRST – we would see almost nothing we see in our lives today….the good or the bad.

Embrace Broken

We have had things that were not working properly or as effectively as they could/should have been for, well, decades.

The cycle never ends. We just think it only exists when the news is terrible – which admittedly is most of the time these days – correctly so or not.

The actual point to this rambling?

We gotta have problems people – we are just looking at them incorrectly.

Problems are growth, opportunity, solution-minded. Problems in our economy are what cause us to step forward into a solution, a fix, a better way, a better tool, a better software, a better medicine, a better service, a better answer.

Economic hurdles in a thriving, evolving eco-system should be fully expected – not feared. They are there for a reason – to make us better, to cause us to advance, to solve and to step up the grand mountain we are all climbing.

Go Back and Check

I will include a few charts again from recent morning notes. Here is the message: Go back and look at all those red dots.

You will find they have two things in common – EVERY single time.

First, the world was flooded with problems, some at the time were very significant.

Second, they were all coincident indicators of great value for long-term, patient investors willing to overlook the short-term and focus instead on the long-term nature of problems and solutions.

The Bottom Line

When we are told things are broken, when we are told there are nothing but hurdles and problems for decades to come, when we are told that the horizon is dark….we can be sure that someone has a flashlight and is building solutions.

It is how we got here…now, today…with the greatest mountain of collective and per-capita wealth every known to mankind.

Now, back to my coffee, TUMS (fruit-flavored) and my buy list praying for more dips….join me won’t you?

While I look for my flashlight – here are those charts I promised….

Here is the deal:

The purple dot on the top chart and the blue dot on the bottom chart is where we are now – in this terrible place, this awful economy we are always told to be afraid of for one reason or a dozen.

One more thing – the top chart covers back to the 50’s – six decades. The bottom chart is a couple hundred years – both are riddled with problem after problem after problem…..