Risk/Reward/Rapacity

I have been surfing lately on weekday mornings.  I awake three hours before work begins, put on a damp swimsuit and strap my longboard to the roofrack.  At the beach I hike across a foggy expanse of cold sand, paddle out past the breakers in cool water and do what the herd of other surfers do: wait.

Surfing takes patience, or something like it.  And there’s the rub.  The amount of time I spend waiting for a good wave,  missing a good wave and wiping out on a good wave far, far outweighs the amount of time I spend actually surfing.  And this is the case for almost all surfers (better surfers use smaller boards on bigger waves, and therefore fail about the same amount).  Something similar can be said for bowling (I take a strike only a couple of times per game) and making movies (only 40% make more money than they cost, and a precious few of those are the pride and joy of their makers), and a slew of other hobbies and occupations.  What is it about high risk that is so attractive to people?  Equally high reward?  I am skeptical.

Surfing and bowling (and theoretically moviemaking) are some of the most frustrating endeavors I have ever encountered.  They seem to take so much and give so little.  But it is exactly this reason that they inspire a certain rapacity, voraciousness.  My theory is that these activities give one the illusion that he is very close to success and lure him into irrational pursuit of it.  Where we cross into irrationality takes us beyond the (quasi-rational) risk/reward ratio and into a blind fever for conquest.  It might be driven by the same part of the brain that drove Napoleon.

This rapacity that reaches beyond risk and reward must be a very basic instinct to perfect oneself.  In these cases a person somehow downshifts into a lower evolutionary level in order to accomplish his objective.  Compulsive gambling must be a misguided brother of this impulse, and gambling is illegal in 31 of the United States.  However, I do not support those who would abolish surfing, bowling or moviemaking in the US.  I, like the states, determine a gamble by its reliance upon chance as opposed to skill.  And here it departs from surfing, bowling and (debatably) moviemaking.

I suppose I find it disquieting how powerful the irrational sphere of the human brain can be, even with the daily, petty stuff of life.  But I won’t stop surfing.