Listening to a group discuss interest rates, I noticed something interesting. A gentleman in his 70s said that he’d paid an interest rate of ~20% on his home mortgage in the early 1980s. He views current rates as normal, while younger people in the same conversation think today’s rates are abnormally high.

It was interesting to see two groups of people who are experiencing the same reality view it differently because their life experiences have given them different baselines.

This conversation reminded me that there can be value in understanding the history of a topic instead of just what’s happened in my lifetime. It can affect how I perceive the present.