Quote of the week:
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
-Albert Camus
Oh my God! Hello everyone!
I realize my connection has been sporadic… Sorry about that. If you watch the above video tour, you’ll begin to understand why. I’ve been volunteering as a yoga teacher in a hostel on the coast of Ecuador.
My days have been a blur of yoga flows, surfing, and jungle life with a variety of animals.
There are kittens here, which has made writing take a backseat to the fact that THERE ARE KITTENS HERE.
I’ve been wrestling with the fact that as I get happier and happier through yoga and surfing, I feel like writing and reading less and less.
I wonder if this feeling is common among writers. After all, there are very few speeches/comedy shows/books about people who are simply, uncomplicatedly happy.
What is the reason all the happiness books don’t seem to work? Could it be that the answer isn’t in studying it?
In my experience, happiness happens as a by-product of chasing what you love and living the shit out of it.
How do you put that knowledge in a self-help book? I don’t know if you can. But in the western world, we want the method. The 10-step approach. The analytical nonsense.
Happiness dies in analysis. That might be the best way of phrasing what I’ve learned in the last year.
And also, if you have a kitten, hug the crap out of it.
A great book I read last week:
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan
What a wild ride. This is one of those books that smashes its way into your psyche and reminds you that you’re not alone.
The love of surfing is hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t surf.
You get bashed around by the ocean. You bleed sometimes. The places where the waves are breaking are often hard to get to and annoying, and you become a walking hive of insect bites because of the time you spend in the tropics.
Your eyes are bloodshot from saltwater. Your arms hurt from paddling around 90% of the time you’re in the water. Big waves come through and hold you down sometimes.
Half of the waves you catch (depending on the break and a host of other factors) close out before you can ride them. The waves you do ride (on a beach break) only last 3-15 seconds.
And yet those seconds you spend on the wave are so transcendent that your life totally changes. When you realize that you can live and ride in harmony with something as chaotic as a wave, you are never the same.
In Barbarian Days, William Finnegan tells us the story of growing up in Hawaii right as surfing was becoming hugely popular. His love of surfing takes him all around the world, and we ride along with him and his friends as he chases waves through the pacific rim.
If you’re not a surfer but you’d love to know why those lunatics paddle out and get bashed around every day, Barbarian Days is for you. It’ll take you one step closer to understanding what surfing means to the people who become obsessed with it.
A lighthearted show I’ve been watching:
Taskmaster is an English show where a group of comedians compete for glory, a trophy, and bragging rights.
The challenges they have to undergo are hilarious, ranging from “design and execute the best quick-change outfit” to “paint a wolf on the spinning teapot.”
It’s one of the most hilarious shows I’ve ever seen, and there are 8 seasons of 8 episodes each on Youtube, for free.
That’s all she wrote, folks! There’s not much else going on in my life other than watching WSL surfing :) at the moment, I’m plumbing the depths of my ability to simply be ok.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you’re not too stressed. I hope you’re getting enough sleep. I hope that you’re staying away from doomsayers and their pessimism!
Friday Fun Flier XL