Somewhere in Indo. Photo by Justin Devos/Craig Ritchie
Our generation is a Lost Generation in many ways. The worst economy since the Great Depression has held us back, held us down, and made it difficult for us to find our place in a world made smaller by economic adversity. It’s a world with no room for our dreams, no room for our talents. It’s a world where we learn to take what we can get and be damn thankful for it-whether it is a shitty job or a good career that maybe we don’t like but we hold onto because it’s considered by some asshole to be a “good career.” And we hold onto this thing called a “good career” and devote our lives to it not because it’s a life we want to live, but because we are somehow made to believe that being unhappy with our everyday lives is normal, it’s just part of being and an adult.
We all had dreams. Many of us have given up. I gave up. I gave up and found myself spending my life in an office working in commercial real estate. I woke up and found myself on the La Jolla Town Council discussing matters of great importance-matters such as potholes and parking meters. I woke up and found myself “networking” and “advancing my career” on “committees” and “boards of trustees” in my spare time instead of hanging out at the beach. I never wanted to work in an office. I never wanted to work in commercial real estate. I never wanted to be on the town council or some ridiculous committee. I wanted to surf. I’m not a fancy guy-I’m happiest when I’m sunburned with sand between my toes. I woke up and found myself living a life that wasn’t mine and I felt I was doing a pretty damn good job of living it “successfully”-which is not a good thing.
I’m not writing this because I think I am extraordinary, but because I know I am not. I am writing this for the people back at home that are stuck in a rut. I feel that if I can change my life, anyone can, and if any of my experiences can help someone change their life for the better, than all this writing and all these words will be worth it. If I can inspire one person to take the initiative to change their life for the better, then it will be worth it for me. So, I’ve decided to make my life an experiment, and let everyone who wants to know about it able to hear about it, all you have to do is read it if you want to. The experiment is this: can I change my life into what I want it to be? Can I continue to chase waves in places like Indonesia, S Africa, W Australia, Baja California, and Nicaragua? Can I somehow make this my life? If I can do it, you can do it. Can a 30 year old average California office shmuck live the dream? That remains to be seen, but so far, so good.
The name I came up with for this experiment was inspired by my fascination with humanity’s two great motivators: love and fear. Thoughts and discussions during my time in S Africa were largely based on this dichotomy. So much of our lives is motivated by fear. We have six different types of insurance to protect us from any conceivable disaster that insurance companies can dream up to scare us into buying their insurance. We have careers that we don’t like yet devote our lives to for fear of being considered “unsuccessful.” We spend all our earnings from these careers on useless things like insurance or nice cars that we buy for fear of not fitting in, not being cool, not looking successful as we sit in traffic for hours every day, inching to and from our careers that we hate.
Our generation is the Lost Generation. The term Lost Generation was originally applied to a group of expatriate writers living in Paris beginning in the 1920’s and lasting through the Great Depression of the 1930’s. They were a generation that felt alienated from the rest of society. Much like us, the world seemingly had no room for their dreams, for their visions for the world. They lived in the Great Depression; there was no room for dreaming in the Great Depression. The youth of that time, much like the youth of our time, sat underutilized, cast off to the sidelines to wither away doing nothing because there was no opportunity for them. There were no jobs for them. There was no room for them to come of age in America or elsewhere. But there were a few people who believed in themselves.
There were a few artists and writers that basically said “fuck this, I’m out of here.” And those few went to Paris. What did they do in Paris? They drank cappuccinos all day, drank wine all night, bounced positive energy, creative ideas, and optimism off of each other, and in their spare time they created some of the best works of art and literature the world had ever seen. They were people with names like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. Good things happened when they surrounded themselves with likeminded creative people with positive attitudes. Good things happened when they put themselves in Paris. In my humble opinion there is something to be learned from that, but that’s just my two cents.
While in S Africa, Phil, Lara, and I had an interesting discussion on about a thought. The lives of some of the most important people in our lives now revolve largely around Bali, Indonesia. It is the land of instant karma. It is the land where good things happen to us. Bali takes care of us. We all strive to return here. For half the year, she is the center of the surfing universe. She is always on our mind. She is the center of the spider web that holds us all together. Most of my closest friends will be here this season. Some like me are quitting their jobs to come here for the surf season this year, and to remake their lives in the process, to find a new path, a path based on love rather than ‘careers.’ Many of those friends are people that have had a huge impact on my life, people whom without their encouragement, I would have never come here in the first place, and I would have never have made it this far without them either. Bali is the center of our universe. Our futures lie here. This is where we remake our lives into what we want them to be, not what some career counselor who has never had a real job in their life told us our lives should be. Bali is the shining city on the hill. She is our refuge from our fear motivated previous existences. This is where we come of age. This is where our Lost Generation is being found. This is Our Paris.
2012 isn’t the end of the world. It’s the end of our old worlds. We’ve paid our dues. We’ve done what we are “supposed” to do. We’ve done what we “should do.” 2012 is when we come into our own. 2012 is the death of the nightmare of the second Great Depression which has dominated our adult lives, and the birth of the dream that is life as it should be-life as a happy person pursuing one’s own happy existence. Now, we’re doing what we want to do. And Bali is where we’re doing it.
I have spent the last eight months chasing what I love, and even though I don’t have a car or fancy zip code behind my address anymore, I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life. My life has been condensed to a surfboard bag, a duffel bag and a back pack. I have no material wealth whatsoever. My possessions are limited to what I can carry in the three aforementioned bags. For a guy that spent the first 29 years of his life stressing himself to the point of self-torture in the struggle to get rich in America, the idea of having my life condensed to three bags amazes me. The concept is still foreign. I believe I am happier now because I am pursuing what I love. Possessions are shackles. They are a prison. I traded my possessions for passion. The further I pursued this passion, this love- my love of surfing- the less the other things mattered. The old fears of not living the American dream began to matter less and less. The people that I used to think I had to impress mattered less. The standards that I thought I had to live up to in the name of success matter less. Fear in general began to disappear, fear began to matter less. Why? Because if you fill your life with what you love, you have no room for fear, and that is an amazing feeling for someone who was scared shitless every day because he wasn’t sure he was going to cut it in the American standards of success. Love is a Noble thing. This experiment is about pursuing what you love. This experiment is about basing your life around what you love, and letting everything else fall into place-not vice versa like we were always told we should do. It’s not about doing whatever you have to do in order to maybe sometimes have a little time to do what you love on the weekends when you don’t have to devote your time to your ‘career.’ It’s about doing whatever it takes to do what you love and letting everything else in life revolve around that. This experiment is about love. Fear is weak. Love is noble. This is a Noble Experiment.
I hope it works.
Read more of Evan’s work at The Quiet American
