Slow down. Look at the road that is your life. Like Ferris said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t slow down once in a while, you might miss it.”
I have a tendency to do things too quickly. I rush through life, constantly looking towards the next thing I want to do, only to find two things: one, in my rush to finish, I don’t enjoy the process enough. Two, because I’m constantly thinking about what the next thing will be, I lose interest in whatever project I’m doing and finish it half-assed, leaving a final product with a solid foundation and shoddy trim work. This has been a constant in my life, but I’m only just now, in the last few years, realizing that it has been. I notice it most when I’m traveling–the constant act of looking forward to something else ruins the moment I’m actually in.
A few years ago, my girlfriend and I drove a 1981 Dodge camper van from Canada to sunny Southern California. I’ve written about it so much that I don’t feel like getting into it here, but the stories are floating around there on the internet, if you care to read them. After three months of living, laughing, loving, and arguing–all of it passionately–she went home and I stayed in LA. I moved an hour north of LA proper and set up shop in the hills far from the glittering mess that is the city. The van, so loved and hated and used and cared for, sat idle on the street while I built (still building, in fact) a little house. It sat for nearly three years, collecting cobwebs and rats, drowning in the not-so-common downpours, grass growing up beneath its wheels. I’d start it up every now and again, telling myself that at some point, I’d get around to doing the brakes, along with a mixed bag of different little fixes it needed after a lot of driving. Of course, life got in the way, and before I knew it, I looked at it and realized it had gone from something that I was incredibly attached to to something that looked destined for the scrap yard. It made me very sad.
Then I did a trip to Mexico (here) with a few friends who were in a camper. I flew, they picked me up, we camped, laughed, surfed, and drank as one will do on a trip to Mexico. I thought about the van almost constantly–lying in my tent at night, looking up into the inky blackness, listening to the waves cranking off the rocks, I wished desperately that I was in the van. I wished I hadn’t let it sit for so long. I wished I hadn’t let it get to the state of disrepair it was in. I wished I could take it anywhere and everywhere, whenever I felt the urge. I was already looking forward to something so much I wanted to rush through it, get it done, and experience what I wanted to experience. But in thinking more about it, that’s the problem: I rush through things, get them finished, and don’t give myself enough time to enjoy them. I think that’s an issue that might afflict a lot of surfers–the attraction to something that you look forward to only to find that once it’s done, you can’t really remember it. I can’t remember some of the best waves of my whole life, because I spent so long rushing to get to them, then didn’t realize that I was actually on them until it was too late. I told myself to swallow my pride and take the van to a mechanic as soon as I got home. I did.
Today, I picked it up. New brakes, new gaskets, new everything. A small lift, a fresh tank of gas, and a good scrub. It drives like a dream. It drives like I knew it wanted to. I have plans for it–big ones. And I’m not going to rush into them, like I do with so many other things. I’m going to take my time fixing the rest of the issues with it, take my time planning a trip, and go only when we’re ready. I’m determined not to miss out on anything else simply because I’m already doing it. It feels good.
