Work Ethic - Courage
My mom taught me at a young age that I should never let money impact the way I work. Regardless of compensation, I should do my best. She further explained that the people who do not show their best work, because they aren’t being paid very much, may never get a chance for a better paying job because others will assume that the quality of their work reflects their full capacity and motivation.
She also taught me a valuable lesson about discouragement and self-doubt. Summer 1989, I was struggling to learn algebra in a summer school class. I was sitting alone in front of my school book and notepad, frozen with frustration, anger, and discouragement. My mom was often busy with church service, community volunteer work, managing a household of eight (six being her children) but she always took time to sit with me, help me with my homework, and impart wisdom.
On this day, she sat down next to me and said, “I can see that you’re frustrated and discouraged. It’s common for people to feel these feelings. Always remember though, when someone is paying you to do a job, they do not need your frustration or discouragement, they need your help, your best, and right now your job is being a student. So don’t let your frustration and discouragement stop you from doing that today.” This conversation was not much of a conversation, she did all the talking, while I hung my head low, staring at the floor, not speaking. Before the mother-son conversation was finished she said, ”Look at me, tell me you understand and promise to do your best.” Looking at her, and speaking the words, “Yes, I understand and yes, I promise,” gave me the courage to keep working, to keep trying to understand my algebra homework. About thirty minutes after that conversation, the dark clouds of discouragement left and my mind was clear; I was figuring out my homework.
I’ve reflected on that conversation many times over the past 30 plus years. I’m also happy to report to my mom, that this single conversation long ago, likely did more for my success in the workplace than anything else. Although frustration and discouragement have been a consistent struggle in my personal life, it has not been in my work life.
For the benefit of my sons, I knew that I needed to figure out why I had this division in my life. Why was I able to deliver quality work to employers, but not give myself the same benefits in my personal life? Situational excellence is a common condition in western society and I’ve come to see it as something very harmful to the individual. I feel that the inconsistency inside of us, creates fractures and disfunction. I’ve also come to believe that if we want to be happy and whole, we need to treat all of our work the same, with excellence as the constant goal, and if anything in life doesn’t deserve excellence, maybe it shouldn’t be in our life.
Four Brothers
The haiku below is something my older sister would say to boys that were bullies or creepy. She did not mention the fact we were all younger. I love my two sisters (four boys in the middle) and I love my skatepark sisters. I also love all my skatepark brothers that keep the sisters safe from bullies and creepy dudes.
Skatepark Sisters,
If you grew up without brothers who were willing to stand up for you, you have them now. Say that you have 2, 4, 6, or 8 brothers… whatever feels right for the situation.
FOUR BROTHERS
I have four brothers!
You better not mess with me…
They will beat you up
TEACH THEM YOUNG
My mom and grandma always told me that I reminded them of my Grandpa Bud. I’ve always enjoyed hearing that, but I was also concerned that the alcoholic part of my grandfather was inside of me. Despite his flaws, his thirst for cold Coors, he loved to read, to clip out clever comics and satire, and listen to Dodger games on the radio with family. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and I want to help my sons appreciate the man he was and not repeat the mistakes that he, and I, have made. My family often quoted his parenting philosophy, often spoken with a touch irony: “You teach them to walk and talk, then you teach them to sit down and shut up.”
This haiku is dedicated to my grandparents, my parents, and to my three sons.
TEACH THEM YOUNG
How to walk and talk
When to sit down and shut up
When to stand and speak
Never Complain
This photo is from September 1967, my parents just got married, driving away in my dad’s 1964 Ford Falcon. Skip ahead two decades…
1980s
West LA
I hope you enjoy the haiku below; it’s dedicated to my parents and what they taught their six kids. They taught us to love others, not to judge, and to always share what we have. They both live their lives this way. These thoughts about the less fortunate were shared by my mother to me and my brothers at a young age (the girls needed less correction and instruction).
Boys, never complain
Those with less, want your problems
Think of them, and share
Momma Lu
An Old Chinese Man
Circa 2010 San Jose, CA
Westfield Valley Fair Mall
Sitting in the mall food court, regretting my meal choice and feeling sorry for myself. I was feeling entitled. I was wronged, poor me; I was suffering an injustice with this sub-standard meal. About 15 feet away was a slender, modest, and well-groomed Chinese man who looked like he was in his 80s. His posture was perfect and his movements were smooth and swift. I couldn’t stop staring at the guy and I remember thinking he was moving like a young man in an old man’s body (which reminded me of my Grandpa Bud). Often times you see people in their 80s who are not moving too fast but this man seemed to have somewhere to be. From 15 feet away his food plate appeared to be spotless, no visible remains of the chicken, broccoli, or rice. Then, he poured a tiny amount of water on his paper plate, followed by a couple of finger pokes to break the sticky rice free. He picked up his plate, swirled the water around to get the rice moving, and then carefully bent the plate to drink it.
I don’t recall ever seeing someone so careful and intentional about not wasting food, even a single grain of rice.
His example did not inspire me to finish my food that day; what I ordered was just gross, not that healthy either. He did, however, inspire me to be more intentional about the food I eat and the type of man I become: The type of man who is careful, moves with intention, eats healthy… and NOT the type of man who orders unhealthy mall food, wastes half of it, and then people watches for an indefinite amount of time.
I wish I knew more about this man’s life. He seemed to have a soldier’s discipline and displayed the virtues of prudence, modesty, thrift, and cleanliness.
What examples have you seen lately that gave you pause?
In Over my Head
In 1991, I came very close to death by drowning in some big and treacherous Northern California surf. After surviving the experience, I had a strong impression that when I properly understood what took place in the water, I needed to share the story. It’s taken almost 30 years for me to understand what happened that day and the current COVID experience prompts me to share it now.
Those who know me well, know that I have lots of stories to tell, and I enjoy telling them. What they may not know, is I have lots of stories that I don’t tell, they’re not fun or funny and I don’t enjoy thinking about them, let alone telling them. They are my personal experiences with self-loathing, feeling like I don’t belong, loneliness, depression, anxiety, addiction, and my inability to breathe freely (thanks to asthma and allergies). I’m committed to begin telling my stories with the hope it’ll help others survive the really bad days, and to live with more vitality than suffering.
For me personally, I enjoy being alone, likely much more than the average person. I’ve learned, however, that it isn’t good for me to spend too much time alone. While surfing and skating are very much individual activities, more often than not, communities spring up, and friendships form that will last a lifetime. C.S. Lewis, in his book the Four Loves, talks of friendship as the most misunderstood and undervalued of the loves and how it starts and centers around shared activities. He refers to friendship as a ‘noble irresponsibility’. This description seems well-suited to surfers and skaters.
I heard a speaker once say that if you greet every person you meet as if they were dealing with some serious trauma or heart ache that you’ll be right more than half of the time. We have no idea what other people are going through, let alone understanding what moves and drives the thoughts and feelings inside of us. The surf and skate communities attract a unique type of person, who is more likely to struggle with what might be considered ‘normal life’. With COVID-19, people are talking more than ever about the need to be actively engaged in communities, meditation, mindfulness, and the human need to feel connected to others, to be needed and loved.
At a very young age, before I did anything wrong, I learned to feel shame and embarrassment for being different from my siblings and kids at school and church. For example, I wasn’t able to recite the 12 months of the year, even though I knew them, until I was 10 years old. I would get to August and September and I would get stuck; my mind would go completely blank and I couldn’t finish. This is the dictionary definition of dumb: temporarily unable or unwilling to speak. I understand now that it’s not an uncommon condition to get nervous, stage freight of sorts, and to freeze up physically and mentally. My emotions were also something I couldn’t control. Around 8 years old, while watching a Garfield cartoon with my older brother, I wept for what I thought, at the time, was the most awful of possible experiences. In the episode, Odie was caught by a dog catcher, imprisoned awaiting a gas chamber where the unwanted animals were killed. Odie didn’t understand the danger he was in and Garfield, in rare form, was kind and caring while trying to help Odie escape. He also apologized for being a bad friend. My older brother saw my tears and ridiculed me for crying, saying, “You can’t cry watching Garfield”. Years later, Tom Hanks said something similar in the baseball film, League of Their Own, “There’s no crying in baseball”.
In recent years, I’ve felt a lot of guilt for surviving several years of foolish behavior, when close friends didn’t survive. When my friends and I were engaged in dangerous, reckless behavior, I took some comfort that we knew the risks and we were working with the same information to help us navigate our stupidity. I know now that I was wrong. My parents and grandparents imparted wisdom to me that I believe my friends lacked, which is why I want to include life lessons in the stories I tell. Here we go:
My mom taught me when I was a child that if I ever found myself in a situation where I was truly powerless to change it, that I would need to learn to see it a different way. The context of this instruction was her experience growing up with an alcoholic father. As a child, my mom prayed that God would make her dad stop drinking and that prayer was never answered. As a woman, she understood that she had prayed for the wrong thing because her father needed to choose sobriety.
My dad taught me that playing in the ocean was dangerous, and that to survive, I would need to conserve my energy and if I was ever caught in a current, that I should do my best to relax, and make a plan before exerting any energy to improve my situation. He also taught me not to fear death, that death was a passing from one state to another and that I would be welcomed by family and friends on the other side.
If there’s anything noteworthy about my life, I would say that I have a lot of experience being inexperienced and that experience includes a few close calls with death.
Circa 1991 Northern California surf spot - Secrets
Some context… big waves at beach breaks frustrated me on several occasions because I couldn’t make it out due to a paddling deficiency. My friends could and I didn’t enjoy spectating. This specific surf spot was in a cove with beautiful lefts that would break off a cliffside. It also had a channel so you wouldn’t have to fight the waves to paddle out. The waves were meaty and after they broke, it looked like a two story house of angry white water; it was frightening to the core and deafening. The forecast said the waves were going to be 12-14 feet (faces) and they were all of that and then some. I tried to catch a few but I wasn’t feeling it nor was my board the optimal size. It all sort of felt like death. Ocean people know, no matter how big or small the swell, you can expect a few rogue waves that are bigger than the rest. On an already big day, you kind of don’t want to see that big rogue wave unless you’re already familiar with riding them. I was not.
After about 45 minutes in the water, not able to catch one, the big rogue set came in and closed out the entire cove. With the board floating next to me, I took a deep breath, and started swimming straight down, thinking I was going to escape the wave’s power but lose my board. About 10 feet deep, feeling increasing tension on my ankle, meaning I was ‘tombstoning’ the board, I met with an underwater explosion. My leash broke instantly; I didn’t feel any pull on my leg, and my board was gone. It felt like I was being ripped in different directions but the dominant direction was down. I used about 20% of my oxygen swimming as deep as I could, as quickly as I could, and the force of the wave that sent me spinning down further took another 40% or so. I spun head over heels six times or more, covering my face and head with my arms thinking I was going to get smashed into the ocean floor but that never happened. I felt a strong and stable current grab me and it stopped the spinning enough that I could open my eyes to figure out which way was up.
When I opened my eyes I felt only shock, terror, and a profound sadness because I was certain that I was going to drown and die. Understanding depth and distance in the water can be tricky but it appeared to me that I was 40 to 50 feet deep and the undercurrent was taking me deeper and out to sea. With most of my oxygen already used up, I made no attempt to swim up out of the current because I knew I wouldn’t make it and even if I did, I would only have the second wave land on me, repeating the process. I didn’t understand what a panic attack was in 1991 but I had one for about five seconds. I wanted to cry, scream, and scramble up for air and I’m guessing my heart beat about 30 times in those five seconds using another 10% of oxygen; my heart never felt heavier, I was positive that this was my end. I also felt an incredible sadness for my mom; I knew my death would break her heart. With no reason or hope for survival, I remembered what I learned from my parents and I decided to see the situation differently, relax and enjoy my last moments alive so I had a good story to tell when I crossed over and I was reunited with my dead. I could have titled the story, “In Over my Head, a Story for My Dead”. That was my plan. Then, everything changed in an instant as if my decision to relax and try to enjoy my last moment alive smashed the proverbial safety glass, and I pressed the big, red survive button inside of me, that I didn’t know existed.
My experience is similar to what is described in Torsten Durkan’s article on theinertia.com, “Understanding Freediving Blackouts and How to Prevent Them”. I’m guessing I was approaching a depth of 60 feet when the ocean hugged my sadness and despair away. I slipped into a lucid dream, my heavy heart was as light as a feather and I felt more happiness and contentment than at any other moment in my life. In the moment, I imagined it was like floating in outer space (strangely similar to the music video from Gorillaz, “Saturn’s Barz (Spirit House)") and I saw the ocean around me as a beautiful universe inside of another universe. The cliffside that made the cove was not a cliff, it was a mountain that could’ve been hiked. I was visually overwhelmed, feeling grateful and humbled, as if I were a child experiencing Disneyland for the first time. The depths of the anxiety, depression, and self-loathing that I experienced as a child and a teenager were reversed and I felt a blissful peace and profound contentment. I felt completely whole. … and although the universe was massive and expansive and I was like the smallest grain of sand in comparison, the universe was good, intentionally designed and I was good, a part of that design, and that I belonged. I also felt a connection to all truth, an incredible comfort that even though there was so much I didn’t know, I knew I would know the truth when I came upon it, and truth would be available to me when I needed it.
This euphoric dream seemed to go on for several minutes, but it was interrupted when I saw, in my peripheral vision, a wave breaking on the ocean’s surface. I have no idea how much time had passed or if I was under the water for one, two, or three set waves. The experience felt like it could’ve been five or ten minutes but I’m positive that was not the case. What I do know is my perception of time changed radically. When I saw the breaking wave out of the corner of my vision the euphoric lucid dream began to fade and it was gradually replaced with a simple calm, like falling asleep; I was starting to black out. With about 10 feet of ocean water separating me from the surface, it felt like someone or something gently shook my shoulder, waking me up and said, “If you want to live, you need to swim up.” Without any urgency to breathe, I put my body back in gear, and in a few strokes I was able to swim to the surface and I took a breath as if nothing had happened. The offshore winds were blowing the water off the tops of the waves and with the sun shining in the background, I was greeted by a rainbow. Reminded of my mortality, overwhelmed with gratitude for my life and the beauty of the ocean and this experience, I felt some hope and confidence that I would be a father someday, life was worth living, and I had a good cry.
It took me about 20 minutes to swim in, the shore break was violent and difficult to navigate. I was able to retrieve my board and when I got back to my friend’s truck, I had a pounding migraine headache, and a persistent prompting to share the experience, sometime in the future, when I really understood what happened.
This is what I understand now:
The ocean has more power than a thousand strong friends could ever offer so surviving isn’t about strength and power, it’s about trust, submission, patience, staying in the moment and not stressing the outcome. There’s an ebb and flow to life, a balance, always a reckoning. The reason I couldn’t escape the wave’s power that day by swimming under it was because of the cove; the power and force of the broken wave bounced off the cliffside and thrust me into the deep. Surviving hardships and crisis is less about strength and more about acceptance, adapting, fostering hope, even when having hope seems hopeless.
While I was blacking out, I had no anxiety, no fear of death, and no desire to breathe; I was at peace. The voice I heard, the invitation to swim up if I wanted to live, did not seem like it was coming from me, but outside of me. The words were also a proposal of hope, a hope that I did not have before 1991: I could live a life worth living, that I could have a life with joy and peace, pain and struggle included.
So, for anyone struggling right now, or might be in the future, for my friends and family in (or out of) the surf and skate community, and anyone else that reads this, please don’t give up on life. Your story is worth living and you do not have to suffer all the time but you might need to look at your life and your current situation differently. You also might need to relax and let go of fear.
up.
swim
…and if you want to live,
I would love to know what you think and hear your stories too.
Feel free to connect with me on instagram @stayskating and use the hashtags #stayskating and #stayskatingstories
Westwood Beatdown - Rules about Fighting
Circa 1988
Los Angeles
… after seeing a movie in Westwood with friends, I was on the losing end of a racially motivated street fight. We were three, they were eight, and they started it.
I don’t want to glorify fighting by telling the complete story so instead I’m sharing a poem about it and what I was taught at home about fighting.
My dad taught me the following fight rules:
Never start a fight
Aggressively defend myself if a fight is forced on me
Defend those who can’t defend themselves (permission to be aggressive with bullies)
Never give a sucker an even break
I understood rule 4 to mean that the gentlemen’s rules of fighting do not apply when a human being is putting other human beings in harms way with complete malice and disregard for life. I’m sharing this story now to honor my father, and pass the wisdom along to my sons and friends. My dad is a good man and I’ve always admired him. He is kind, giving, gentle, thoughtful and he believes in mercy and justice for all.
This was my ‘Westwood Beatdown’ experience in haiku form:
Picked up, dropped, concussed
Kicked in the neck, ribs, bung hole
Ready to fight now
Question what you know…
Just because you’re right
Doesn’t mean you understand
Question what you know
Feel me? - Haiku
2020 Haiku
Fremont, CA
We feel pain, fear, doubt
and we stay skating, dreaming
believing we will
Are People Bad or Good?
Circa 1980 West LA
When I was very young, my mom taught me a valuable lesson and I’d like to share it with you:
“There is no such thing as a bad person.
Sometimes people do bad things, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad;
it just means they did something bad.”
I am very grateful to my mom for teaching me that lesson; it had a tremendous impact on my life and changed how I view people around me. I’d like to pass this wisdom along to my three sons, my skating community and any others passing by. In addition, over the years, I have come to believe:
“There is no such thing as a good person.
Sometimes people do good things, but that doesn’t mean they’re good;
it just means they did something good.”
Fostering Initiative
West LA, Circa 1982.
My Dad put a lock on the TV plug so we couldn’t watch any television. It was a punitive move for sure and I believed we were losing TV privileges for a full week. Whatever the actual time was, the threat and weight was felt.
On day 2. my older brother suggested we cut the lock off. He was the mastermind and I was his crony or stooge (ages 10 & 8) . We went in the garage and found a hacksaw. The locking mechanism was very basic, it had 3 parts, a steel tube with holes positioned so that a plug could be inserted, and two pad locks would ensure the plug never makes it to the wall socket. Diabolical.
So we had the idea, we had the tools, now it was time to execute. If you can imagine, it’s not easy for an 8 or a 10 year old to grip or position a padlock to be sawed off. We weren’t strong enough to carry the TV into the garage and use my dad’s vice. On the family room floor, we tried several different ways of doing it that didn’t require our fingers to be right next to the blade but none of them worked. We tried kneeling on the mechanism, standing on the mechanism and nothing was working. The only way to do it was for one of us to hold it tight, risk our fingers, as the other sawed away. I recall switching back and forth because it was so difficult to hold the lock steady. My older brother was able to hold the lock twice as long as I could, moving the hacksaw back and forth was the cake job, no risk to the fingers and easy to hold. Normally, my brother’s strength advantage was a problem for me but in this situation, it gave me a gift; it allowed me to use the strength I had available and feel good about my contribution while appreciating my brother’s strength and not letting it make me feel like I was less, that I was weak.
When Dad got home and saw us watching TV, with his hacksaw 3 feet in front of the TV, his face lit up with joy just like Mr. Weasley’s face did when he learned his boys drove the flying car to Surrey and back in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
I recall being very nervous about his ‘potential’ reaction to what we had done. Cutting that lock off seemed like a difficult task for my brother and me at the time; now that I’m a dad to 3 boys, I understand my dad’s reaction much better.
P.S.
Dear Dad,
You taught me so many valuable lessons; I’ll do my best to share them with your grandsons, my friends and anyone else that wanders by.
I love you lots.
Stay Skating,
Evan Gilstrap