It started small a community college had emailed asking if I would guest lecture a friend of Julia’s had suggested me they wanted someone who had lived through the storms not just read about them I almost said no old reflex said keep quiet stay invisible but curiosity won I told them I’d do one session just to see what it felt like to speak instead of trade

The classroom smelled of new paint and paper the students too young to remember the crashes that shaped me they saw finance as data science as algorithms none of them had ever written an order by hand or shouted across a floor their screens were their world and they believed numbers told the whole truth I started my lecture with a story not a slide I told them about my first day on Broad Street about the smell of sweat and fear and how the first trade that went right felt like touching lightning I watched their faces some smiling some confused I told them that trading was never about money it was about control the illusion of it the addiction of thinking you could predict chaos and they went silent

After class a girl stayed behind said her father lost his job in 2008 said she’d grown up hearing words like foreclosure and bailout but never understood what they meant I told her neither did we not really she said do you regret it I said sometimes but regret doesn’t pay back the years she asked if I was still trading I said no she smiled said then maybe that’s your profit

I started teaching more often at first once a month then weekly Julia teased me said she’d turned me into an academic I said I wasn’t teaching I was confessing she said same thing I liked the students their questions sharp honest they weren’t chasing greed yet they wanted meaning maybe that’s rarer now

At home I kept writing pages filling faster than I expected not about trades anymore but about patterns of behavior about how markets mirror emotion the same hope fear panic repeated through generations maybe teaching was another form of trading ideas instead of capital risk replaced by honesty

One evening after class I walked by my old office the lights still burning late the glass glowing cold I could see figures inside bent over screens I felt no jealousy just a kind of sadness and relief like watching a storm from the shore knowing you don’t have to sail through it again

Julia and I met for dinner that week she said she’d read one of my essays online said it sounded almost peaceful I said I was trying she said maybe you should publish them I said maybe she said don’t say maybe just do it she had that way of turning advice into inevitability

The essays spread faster than I expected small publications first then interviews people fascinated by the idea of remorse in finance one reporter asked if I blamed the system I said the system is just people pretending it isn’t about them he asked if I believed it could change I said people don’t change they just forget he laughed said that was bleak I said that was history

By late that year I had students writing to me from everywhere asking how to stay human in a world of numbers I told them I didn’t know but trying mattered more than success some said they wanted to work on Wall Street I didn’t tell them not to I just told them to remember the feeling of unease when something seems too easy because that’s when the truth hides

Sometimes I still woke before dawn out of habit the body remembering what the mind had let go I’d make coffee watch the sun rise the same way it did when I traded but now it meant nothing and everything at once I’d think about calling Julia just to say good morning but she was often teaching early too maybe thinking the same thing

The markets kept evolving headlines about crypto crashes meme stocks artificial intelligence running funds faster than any human could react every cycle reborn louder slicker younger it didn’t make me angry just tired the same fever wearing new clothes

One night after grading papers I walked to the river again the city stretching out behind me the air cool the water moving slow I realized I wasn’t watching the skyline anymore I was watching reflections shifting with the current no longer trying to read them just letting them be

The next morning my class asked what I thought the next crisis would be I said I didn’t know but it would come and it would end and people would forget and start again that’s what we do that’s why we endure

And for the first time saying it out loud didn’t sound like defeat it sounded like understanding