Editor’s Note: This is the fifth installment of an ongoing series illuminating a number of pearls of wisdom from the great Gerry Lopez.
Wisdom is ill spent on the youth, it’s said, and in surfing, there may be no truer -ism. How many times have you missed a dawn patrol for the ages due to this or that? Gerry Lopez kept score and quickly found that, for him, putting surfing above just about all else was almost always the better option.
But in the 1960s, surfing wasn’t exactly a lifestyle in Hawaii, as Gerry tells it. It was just another sport, at least to most people. But then there are always outliers, and one in particular lit a fire under him: “There was a friend, he graduated the year before us. He went to the University of Hawaii just down the street, and he’d be driving by early in the morning to go surfing–he had a station wagon with his board sticking out the back. He’d just be giving us the finger as he went by. I remember going, man, I want to be able to do that.”
Graduating high school in 1966, Gerry figured he’d get his ya-yas out in Southern California, from a small liberal arts school called Whittier College. Being an alumnus of the very same institute of higher learning (also for no other reason than its relative proximity to surf), here I was thinking that one-time president and John Severson terrorizer Richard M. Nixon was, rather shamefully, the most distinguished figure to have attended our alma mater. Far from it, it turns out. While there, Gerry managed to get surfing on weekends, but life there and then left something to be desired, and he returned to Hawaii after his first year, at which point his career took shape and in nearly no time at all, took off.
Related: Gerry Lopez: “Do More Yoga”
Not to say there weren’t moments that put things into question. Gerry also famously found himself in Hollywood with acting roles, notably Big Wednesday, Conan the Barbarian, and North Shore, among others. Sometime into imbibing the Hollywood lifestyle, he woke up a little on the late side.
“You know, I think I had the great good fortune that yoga came into my life at an early enough age. You know, I went through the ‘60s, man… I remember those Hollywood years, when I was hanging out with Jan-Michael Vincent and living that lifestyle for a brief period of time. You know, I thought it was great, going out every night, chasing girls, getting drunk, snorting coke, and then I woke up one–it wasn’t even morning anymore, it was afternoon. He lived right above Point Zero, just down from Zuma. There’s a great left there that we surfed all the time. I looked out and saw this beautiful south swell, but the south wind had already hit it, you know, ‘cause it was late already. The surf was shitty by then, and I looked at that and I went never again, man. I want that more than this kind of lifestyle. I don’t need this.”
“Everybody goes through that, you know? It’s certainly not something that you want to continue doing because it’s going to kill you. Life’s pretty precious, man…. Sometimes it’s not that easy to just say no, but on the other hand, it is, because you could say no to some things so that you’re able to say yes to the things that matter. What is it that matters to you? A good wave matters a lot to me.”
Related: Gerry Lopez: “Find Your Dao (It Takes a Lifetime)”
“I have a lot of friends that have had problems with different kinds of abuse of substances and stuff like that. You have to want something more to leave that kind of stuff behind, and for me it was really easy because, man, I wanted those waves.”
We all have to ask ourselves something along the lines of “What do you want out of this life?” To Gerry, “it’s kind of obvious. You want to live clean and healthy and be able to go surfing when the waves come, that kind of stuff. To me that’s still important, and I think that’s what has helped me. I mean, right from the beginning I thought yeah, yoga’s gonna help me in my surfing. And so, I guess that’s what made it for me. Everybody’s different, but everybody wants something, and I think that yoga’s gonna help you get that something, whatever it is.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who gets caught in a traffic jam on the 5 and starts pounding the steering wheel and cursing the gods–” I start to tell Gerry, but he catches me: “My wife’s rolling her eyes right now. The cuss words just come out.”
All in stride.
Related: How To Be A Better Surfer In and Out of the Water According to Gerry Lopez