In the fall of 1973, Americans woke up to find that gasoline had become a moral question.

Some states rationed gas by license plate: odd numbers on odd days, even numbers on even days. People waited in lines that curled around city blocks. Some stations put up flags. Green meant gas; red meant go home. A decade earlier, few people had imagined any of it. Oil was cheap, oil was boring, and oil was the last thing on anyone’s mind.

That is how shocks tend to arrive: through the door you were not watching.

This year’s version feels familiar. Conflict in the Middle East has pushed energy prices higher. Forecasters have revised their inflation estimates for 2026 and 2027. The United Nations now puts global growth at about 2.6 percent this year—below its January forecast and well below the pre-pandemic pace. Central banks that thought they were done fighting inflation are checking their tools again.

Most people did not plan for this in 2026. They never do.

The lesson I keep coming back to is simple:

The event is unpredictable. The reaction is not. We cannot know which shock is next. But we know what people tend to do when one arrives: they assume the present will last forever. In 1974, many were sure oil would never be cheap again. By 1986, prices had collapsed.

Leverage does more damage than the shock itself. A family with savings may see a jump in gas prices as an annoyance. A family living paycheck to paycheck may face a crisis. The shock is the same; the room for error is not.

Resilience looks boring until it becomes priceless. Nobody gets applause for holding cash, keeping a second supplier or carrying less debt. Those decisions can look pointless for years. Then one Tuesday, they look like genius.

The world economy has absorbed a pandemic, a war in Europe, tariff battles and now another energy shock, and it is still growing. That is remarkable. But it is not growing because anyone predicted these events. It is growing because enough people, companies and countries left themselves room to be wrong.

That is the forecast I trust: something surprising will happen. Plan for being wrong, not for being right.