The Last Quarter

Surfing, Getting Older, and the End of Western Civilization

How many more of these do we get?

They say there are two distinct periods in life where you feel a noticeable physical decline. One comes when you are around 45 and the other arrives around 60. When 45 hit it was quite remarkable for me, especially because it brought the hard realization that I wasn’t going to be able to go out and fight the rip at 10 foot Sunset Beach forever. Then all of a sudden the old habit of thinking about my trail of mistakes and blown opportunities took on a whole new sting. It turns out there aren’t endless second chances after all, and the cruel joke of the universe dictates that by the time we get our first dim understanding of how the bigger picture works and are finally in the proper frame of mind to make something happen, the end of the tunnel is already coming up.

These thoughts have weighted heavily on my mind lately, especially as I watch the years race across the prematurely-aged complexions of the vaccine damaged (which unfortunately includes most of the people I know). They must see it too, but neither of us will bring up in conversation. There’s no point in torturing them with news about possible treatments if there’s no chance they will listen to me anyway, and even though I still quietly approach people who seem at the end of their rope and ready to try anything, these days it’s generally wiser to play it safe as you never know what will set people off.

Speaking of which I’m already starting to catch some heat at work for taking more jobs than others. Apparently I did not show enough solidarity by refusing to roll up my sleeve with everyone else, and now it’s somehow my fault that their energy is low, they miss work regularly for health reasons, and their growing impatience and irritability makes them difficult to be around in anything more than small doses. The mRNA shots might have turned some people into homicidal Rage Zombies, but even without the increasing frequency of murderous rampages I’m still seeing plenty of clouded thinking and darkened moods that are enough to ruin people’s career prospects while leaving them totally confounded as to why nobody wants to hang out with them.

“But I’m such a nice person on the inside.”

They don’t get the fact that it’s their attitude holding them back, and their chemically stunted ability to follow thoughts to their logical conclusion just makes that hill of remaining gainfully employed an even more difficult climb. You might say magic gives me an unfair advantage, but mostly it just helps me to be less distracted by the shimmering kaleidoscope that we call the Astral Light. I wouldn’t really call it a short cut since it requires a lot of effort, but in exchange for my trouble I get regular reminders to reexamine my own patterns whenever I find myself in conflict with others. Apparently getting my hackles up is how my Spiderman senses alert me that something painful in my own life is ready to become the raw material for my next phase of The Great Work.

It’s not a pleasant process of course, and (as is typical for synchronicities) this latest tropical storm of melancholy also happened to make landfall during my meditations on the Fall Equinox. The implication is now undeniable. Saturnian themes are kicking in the door and demanding satisfaction.

The last quarter moon is putting on a good show tonight, framed by dancing palms and veiled through passing clouds. She will continue to rise over the Koolau range long after I’m gone, but the view tonight was something special just between us. I carry similar images from many lifetimes going way back to my stints as a scruffy coyote tracking down rabbits in the snow or as a pelagic sushi stalker hovering amongst prehistoric coral heads. These fuzzy moon memories mix in with those of conquests, tragedies, crimes, and of course lots and lots of violent deaths.

Kumu Yoga says that we should think of reincarnation as re-deaths rather than re-births. It’s a lot less romantic that way and encourages students to up their game by seeking the shortest path to enlightenment. There might be practical reasons for that approach in a country as crowded as India, but the Western traditions that I’m slowly picking my way through encourage us to try and do something interesting with our time here. We don’t race for the end of the wave, but throw down some turns, float over sections, and kick-stall for a tube. There are amazing opportunities for self-expression in this temporary dream state, and no self-respecting surfer wants their photo posted on Barrel Dodgers Anonymous.

Don’t be that guy…

Unfortunately the urge to slow things down and enjoy the ride also has it’s unhealthy limits, and it seems like the increasingly angry and irrational old men I’ve been dealing have been tasked with alerting me about my laziness and the rapidly approaching end of this incarnation. Sometimes it feels like my life up to this point could be more accurately defined by the waves I missed and all the other opportunities that I let slip away. That’s pretty harsh, but on the other hand it also gives me an advantage if I choose to embrace it.

In surfing the most underrated skill is learning to read waves, and the best surfers make a study of patterns and conditions, creating a library of previous situations where they succeeded or failed. The ability to quickly pull from that library while making the best of a dynamic situation and continuing to try new things is what separates the lifetime watermen from the early retirement guys. If you know the ocean and can reasonably anticipate what will happen then it’s still possible to keep up with a crowd of frothing youngsters chasing each other around the take off zone. Trying to match their enthusiasm and energy levels without making use of this wisdom only leaves us Uncles frustrated and ready to take up golf.

As someone who muscled my way through lots of situations it was a great shock to hit my 40’s and be forced to switch over to relying on my intuition instead. Like most aspects of life I was looking for the easiest path and making it all up as I went along, especially since at the time I was far too obnoxious to accept mentorship. My ego liked to think that the lonely path meant I was stronger, but I wasn’t. Only recently have I gained the ability to be comfortable enough in my own skin to finally have meaningful and productive conversations with others, and those abilities quickly wither with any lapse in daily meditation practice.

The baddest of the bad, or just bad at everything? My apologies, inner child.

On the other hand (after much raking of the coals of regret) I’m starting to figure out that all those mistakes and frustrations are actually a gold mine. Sometimes it takes driving down all the wrong roads in order to build up the will to keep both hands on the wheel and pedal to the metal when you’re finally going in the right direction. One of the cardinal sins of being on a surf trip is to drive away from perfect waves in order to look for something better. That’s usually a beginner mistake but I’ve known plenty of guys who created a self-defeating habit of always turning around and leaving if the conditions weren’t 100% to their liking. A skunking is a skunking and you can’t do much if it’s flat or polluted or angry sharks have taken over the lineup, but the pessimist squad always has an excuse for any occasion. It’s too big, too small, too windy, too crowded, or they just aren’t feeling it. In those instances it’s good to have a friend who will push you out of your comfort zone, but ultimately the choice to enter the arena is yours and nobody can force you to paddle out.

Pondering this brings back some bad memories (specifically this one wave at Cloudbreak in Fiji) but it also helps me understand why so many people are struggling with reality these days. We’re well into the final quarter of our civilization and all the mistakes and bad habits have come back to haunt us. Being a “good person” and following the crowd is no longer enough to get through this unscathed. We have entered a dynamic environment where nobody knows for sure what is going to happen next and every decision we make requires taking on far more risk than usual. Some folks want to get in their cars and drive back to the way things used to be, but now that road is closed and there’s nowhere else to go, so they drive in circles until they run out of gas.

It’s not like there weren’t any signs to warn us.

This past week someone was making fun of my “conspiracy theories” and instead of my usual deflection I told them that we have entered a period of change, and those who try to hold on to the old ways of doing things are going to have a very difficult time. The arrow struck home, and in typical fashion the target got angry and started accusing me of all the things that he doesn’t like about himself. Interestingly enough he finally calmed down after admitting he was confused why there was so much violence recently. Mission accomplished for now I suppose, but it might be a while before the idea seed I planted has a chance to grow roots.

Making that particular statement was a risky move especially as far as my job security is concerned, but apparently it’s exactly what he needed to hear to in order kick start his critical thinking process. What was really odd is that the statement seemed to come out on it’s own, almost like a channeled message. Apparently from a lifetime of needlessly provoking people I had unconsciously gained the ability to recognize a rideable face of reason, pull into a quick truth-bomb barrel and escape out the “doggy door” before the whole thing exploded and smashed me into the reef.

Somewhere along the line I had come into possession of a useful skillset for dealing with the madness of modernity, and it had only started to manifest as a result of working through the vast collection of regrettable choices that I had built up over the years.

 Maybe the whole purpose of the physical degradation of old age is to force us to look into the bag of crap we’ve picked up along the way and discover the gold nuggets hidden inside so that we might share them with others. Similarly on the macrocosm level, maybe the whole point of Western Civilization was for the human project to learn about the perils of basing a massive religious movement around scientific materialism. Perhaps it is now our job to sort through all that we have learned, discard the detritus, and properly package the mission critical lessons for the future? It sure beats wasting our last years talking stink in the parking lot while the kids wait for us to shove off so that they can park in our stall and actually go surf.

True style is ageless. Bob McTavish. .