Surfing Ruined My Life

I must admit the last two days have been tough for me mentally and emotionally.  I am trying to stay strong, but its hard.   Deliberately acting out of one’s naturally ordained character can be very trying on that same person’s animus.  I don’t believe I was predestined to be happy or positive.  Thus this thinking I could ever actually be happy is a rather big stretch to begin with.  

I always like to go back to the Aldous Huxley’s take on happiness in Brave New World “Happiness isn’t grand and can only truly be realized by the simple of mind”.   Then I read Voltaire who in Candide presents happiness as the ability to “Tend one’s garden” to best of his own ability.  Garden in this sense being symbolic for life in general. Finally I took a look at Henry David Thoreau and “On Walden” , his personal life long quest for true happiness being true to yourself and your own beliefs.  To be honest I don’t really know how happy Thoreau was in life.

Up until I read his works in college when I was younger I had yet to really find an author that veraciously embodied myself.  I could in some respect be his reincarnation if such a thing is possible (I have just recently been exploring the spiritual side of things courtesy of my new couch guy Sean).  What ever salvation or delirium he found it was by living rather simply and wandering.  Simple was the common theme here.  

Now I am an intellectually inclined person or at the very least would like to think so.  I will admit that yes I can be a very miserable person to be around.  In my childhood I was down right wanton to be around.  In many ways I guess I still am. I don’t believe I did it on purpose it was just in my nature to constantly shake the tree.  When such an action is taken the results are many times adverse causing my spirits to fall.  After a while I just assumed a negative out look on the world around me.  My mother once put a smile or frown face on a calender for a whole year to prove such a point.  

As I got older and did more reading, thinking, traveling and overall gathering of life experiences I came to realize that I should be able to control my own destiny and emotions.  Being such I got better at changing the way I saw things.  Looking through “rose colored glasses” so to speak, “the bright side of things”.   Its fucking hard.  I find myself constantly torn by contradicting thoughts and emotions.  I fight it well and really do try and stay in the positive frame of mind.  It has for the most part worked out for me over the past few years or so.  

Then there is surfing.  An entity in my life I curse as much as praise.  The most frustrating yet rewarding part of my life.  A true paradox, oxymoron.  Yesterday afternoon I was on the phone freaking out telling my mother I was ready to cash out on my life here in Santa Barbara and move on to either Australia or New Zealand.  I still may.  Then I went surfing and had a hell of a surf and my perspectives changed.  I was stoked, came home cooked a scrumptious dinner for my roommates,watched a Seinfeld and passed out merrily on my couch.  

I woke up this morning and scored really fun Rincon.  I’m not going to go into the details of the surf sessions you read the surf log for that.  It just sets my mind at ease.  These days even the bad sessions bring a sort of solace over me.  I was just talking to a buddy of mine who just recently got back from a surf trip and has yet to surf since.  The first thing I do when I get back from a surf trip is go for a surf if it is ride-able to wash away the annoyance of travel.  Its truly is my soul.  

I find myself constantly fighting this reality.  How is that my essence of being is locked up in a feeling that last no more then a fraction of a second at most times?  Yet it doesn’t.  For me that feeling lasts the entire day.  Even the memory or telling the tale of an epic surf rejuvenates me.  Then the question comes up “can I really surf the rest of my life”?  At some point my body will be too decrepit to remain and then what?  

At the moment I find myself attempting to build a life that would have me surfing less and less all in the pursuit of happiness?  Surfing for me is happiness.  Its crazy talk.  I look around at my current apartment and all the THINGS that I have, the furniture, wood floors I added.  “Nice things” as my ex-wife used to put it, some one who has definitely traded surfing for a “real life”.   In the accumulation of these nice things I have sacrificed so many hours of surf, and good ones at that.  Why?  So people can come over my pad and tell me how nice it looks and how I am finally an “adult”?  I could have surfed all over the world for over a year on what I spent to make this place look nice.  

At the moment I am working on a life compromise.  For me compromising is the hardest thing ever.  If there has not been much writing here lately I am sorry, but I have been working through many serious thoughts and emotions.  I have to lump the two together cause for me they are in most cases synonymous.  At the moment I am at a very crucial cross road; which ever decision I choose will with out a doubt decide the course my life for a very long time.  The decision I have to make is if what I should do and is according to society the “right decision” is the right decision for me.   Maybe I’m not suppose to have nice things. Instead maybe just maybe I am suppose to do great things.  If the ability to have nice things completely trumps my ability to do great things then something is wrong.  

“All men aspire to greatness, yet so few succeed”.   

Perfection is out there and for some reason I don’t think it is found in a compromise.