Author: Joe Leininger

The Good Death—March 2024 “A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”  Mark Twain Have you spent time considering how you want to die?  Society is obsessed with avoiding the topic but had you grown up in Rome in the first century, a conversation about mortality would have been commonplace because the Stoics believed a good death was requisite to a good life.  Besides the Stoics, scandalous rumors were circling then about a murdered Galilean preacher who had talked about death, even...

Someone Like Me – February 2024 I just watched a podcast about an FBI sting that took place in Chicago while I was a 27-year-old trader on the floor. After learning about the ongoing investigation, we wondered who would get arrested next and whether any of the new traders in our pit might be federal agents. After the indictments came, it was apparent that any one of us could have been charged since the people they arrested were regular guys who had the misfortune of befriending the agents...

Rigorous Hope—January 2024 Optimists tend to be characterized as intellectual light weights who can’t understand or don’t appreciate how bad things are in the world.  While we seem to be genetically inclined towards seeing the glass half full or empty, it doesn’t matter where you start.  A fundamental belief that with effort and application, today can be better than yesterday, is needed to get out of the bed each morning.  That is the essence of hope and is requisite to all lives of meaning and...

Trading Limits – December 2023 I had two reasons for taking a job at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange after college. The first was the irreverent atmosphere of the trading floor that I found compelling. The second tied to the fact I needed a job and had no other offers.  After a few years of clerking I took out a loan to try my hand at trading.  The physicality of the pit suited me then and I found that I was good at making quick decisions in the raucous setting.  If an option was cheap, I bought...

The Quantum God   This summer, I went to Switzerland.  Part of the reason for the trip was to meet an inventor who works on clean energy along with several other of the world’s biggest problems.  He has worked with my friend Tom for years, and as you might expect, he is next world intelligent.  I wanted to try and understand the thought process involved in creating solutions from thin air.   The inventor was kind and patient in a brilliant person sort of way and he described his approach to inventing...

We have a 2-year-old German Shepherd pup who I take for walks most mornings. It has been a pretty efficient operation until recently. Previously, I thought Georgie was trained to do her business in the nearby park; very convenient with garbage cans for the poop bags with no landowners hovering to give you the evil eye. Then she started walking past the park to do it in the neighbors’ yards, often those with anti-pooping signs, signified by a crouching schnauzer with a red line through it. Until...

I have owned two bibles since college.  Most mornings I start my day by reading one of them. The leather-bound NIV study bible is the oldest of the two.  It is chock-full of notes and underlines, with questions scribbled on the margins.  I particularly like to read Paul’s letters from this translation because the precision of the words helps me relate to and apply the text.  Periodically, I will read some of those notes and realize that the person who wrote them no longer exists.  Along with some...

The Song-July 2023 When You See the Southern Cross for the First Time, You Understand now why you came this way. ‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small.  But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a comin’ day. Sometimes a song gets inside me in a way that defies logic.  For one summer, I couldn’t get enough of Southern Cross by Stephen Stills.  The soulful rendering of the boat trip he took after his divorce was my anthem that summer, and I listened to it non-stop.   At some...

What’s Next? “The world is going downhill, Joe.  I feel bad about it but our generation was the last one to have it good.  It all seems to be falling apart just as you are growing up.  Sorry for that.” I was ten years old when my grandpa took me aside and shared his rosy outlook for the world.  Since then, I found out that gramps was not alone in wanting to give me bad advice about what to expect in life.  When I turned 21, I was told to, “Enjoy it while you can–it won’t get any better.”...