Ride that wave

Here’s some food for thought:

Over the past century the self-improvement industry has grown to a multibillion-dollar a year industry (according to Wikipedia). And do you know the bottom line of what those self-help authors and gurus are trying to tell us? Life can be made. You write your own destiny. Think of that for a moment: of all the stars and the planets in the galaxy and all the 7.5 billion people on this planet spread out over 195 countries, what are the odds you are ‘making things happen’?

When I was younger I used to think life could be made: you work hard in school, you land a good job right? But as I grew older I learned things happen to us that we have no control over; disease, troubled parents, broken relationships, unemployment. It is just the happy few that have reached extreme highs in their lives that believe life can truly be made. They think they achieved what they have achieved, because they ‘made things happen’. But like Malcolm Gladwell described so well in Outliers, these people had opportunities that others didn’t have. They grew up in an environment that nurtured the talents and interests they were born with. Some say luck doesn’t exist, it’s simply preparation meeting opportunity. Okay, but where does the opportunity come from in the first place, I wonder?

The opportunity is like a wave, it comes from ‘somewhere’. Because there was a storm at sea, or there is a shallow reef near the coast. Of course you have to master paddling, and get on your feet, and stay on to really ride that wave. But you did not ‘create’ the wave. Those are the forces of nature. What I am trying to say here is that there are higher powers at stake. I start to believe we have much less control over our lives than the self-help books tell us we have. As I see it, all we can do is ride those waves that come for us every day and hope for the best.

Happy Surfing!

Image: Me riding my ‘wave’ in Oregon, back in 2018. (Read: Just do it)