Surfing Is What We All Do Throughout Our Lives
At one point in a wide-ranging lecture on art, music, and life, the great musician and producer Brian Eno drew a spectrum with “surrender” at one end and “control” at the other. “I think what humans do all the time throughout their lives,” Eno explained, “is we navigate this spectrum between surrender and control.” Think of a surfer, Eno added, sketching a person standing on a surfboard: “A surfer is constantly in a dialogue between surrender and control.” They are at the mercy of some things—whether or not there are waves, how big they are, and when they break—and in control of other things: when they paddle out, where they position themselves, how skillfully they catch and ride each wave. “Surfing is what we all do throughout our lives,” Eno said. “We’re constantly trying to navigate the forces that we can’t control and that we have to somehow ride, and the forces that we can control.” So it’s crucial, he concluded, “to be able to know when is the time to surrender and when is the time to control,” for a source of great “dysfunction and frustration” in life is trying to control what we should surrender to, and surrendering to what we should try to control.
Surfing the spectrum between surrender and control—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
The People Who Have The Hardest Time
Throughout his career, John Mayer has embraced new media. When artists had mailing lists, to announce a new album—he would design little postcards in Photoshop, print one out, photocopy however many copies, put a stamp on them, and mail them out. When websites became more common, he learned HTML and built his first website. When message boards and then social media platforms became more common, he was active on them. “An artist has to accept that this is a constantly changing environment,” Mayer explained. “The people who have the hardest time are the people who are fighting the future.” When Mayer was starting out, the music landscape was shifting. People were starting to consume music differently. Many artists complained about “the way things were going,” Mayer said. “You’re not gonna hear me complain about the record industry or downloading because my complaining isn’t gonna change it. All you can do is ride it.” All you can do is control the forces that you can control, and ride with the forces that you can’t control.
The Lost Generation
Throughout her career, the graphic designer Paula Scher has repeatedly struck out in new directions, adopted new technologies, not repeated the same tired methods, not fought the future. During a disruptive period of transition in the music industry, for instance—from albums to records to CDs—she evolved and created striking covers for artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. When asked about her ability to regularly innovate and set trends, Scher summed up her approach throughout her career like this: “There was a condition, and I responded to the condition.” There were forces that she couldn’t control and that she figured out how to ride. “In the end,” Scher said, “a person has to be able to adapt to the conditions of their present circumstances.” She told a story about “the lost generation”—a group of designers who resisted changing their ways during the transition to digital tools in the late 1980s and 1990s. As a result, they didn’t make it in the field “because they wouldn’t adapt to the change.” Because they wouldn’t surrender to the forces beyond their control.
Did Andre Agassi’s Hair Just Fall Off?
When he was 19, Andre Agassi started losing his hair. Deeply insecure about his receding hairline, to hide it, he started wearing a hairpiece. At the 1990 French Open, Agassi made it to his first Grand Slam final. “The night before the final,” Agassi writes in his autobiography, Open, “catastrophe strikes.” In the shower, he accidentally used the wrong conditioner, causing the hairpiece to disintegrate in his hands. Agassi’s brother was able to clip the hairpiece back together with twenty bobby pins. The next morning, Agassi writes, “before the match, I prayed. Not for a win, but for my hairpiece to stay on.” Under normal circumstances, playing in his first final of a slam, he’d be a little tense. “But my tenuous hairpiece has me catatonic…With every lunge, every leap, I picture it landing on the clay. I can hear a gasp going up from the crowd. I can picture millions of people suddenly leaning closer to their TVs, turning to each other and in dozens of languages and dialects saying some version of: Did Andre Agassi’s hair just fall off?” So focused on what he’d been better off surrendering to, though he was the heavy favorite, Agassi lost three sets to one. Afterwards, his girlfriend, aware of the hairpiece catastrophe, says, “I think you should just get rid of that hairpiece.” “Impossible,” Agassi replies, “I’d feel naked.” “You’d feel liberated,” she says. He thought it over for a few days: “I thought about the pain my hair has caused me, the inconvenience of the hairpieces, the hypocrisy and the pretending and the lying.” And then he went back to his girlfriend, “Let’s do it…Let’s cut it all off.” His first tournament with a shaved head was another Grand Slam, the Australian Open, and, “I come out like the Incredible Hulk. I don’t drop one set in a take-no-prisoners blitz to the final.” You were right, he told his girlfriend before the final, “my hairpiece was a shackle.” Unshackled from what was a great source of dysfunction and frustration, he was in complete control of his game. In the final, he won three sets to one. “Everyone says it’s my best performance yet, because it’s my first victory over [then #1 player in the world] Pete [Sampras]. But I think twenty years from now I’ll remember it as my first bald victory.”
Focus On What You’re Doing & Getting, Not What Everyone Else Is Doing & Getting
During his first two years at Michigan, Tom Brady was frustrated. He wasn’t playing in games, and in practice, he was so low on the depth chart (fourth) that he only got 2 reps. After two years of this, Brady decided that he wanted to transfer. He met with his coach to express his frustration: “The other quarterbacks get all the reps.” Coach replied, “Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing. All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don’t worry about what you’re doing.” Coach reminded him, “You came here to be the best. If you’re going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.” And then he recommended that Brady start meeting with Greg Harden, a counselor who worked in Michigan’s athletic department. Brady went to Harden’s office and complained, “I’m never going to get my chance. They’re only giving me 2 reps.” Harden said, “Just go out there and focus on doing the best you can with those 2 reps. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.” “So that’s what I did,” Brady said. “They’d put me in for those 2 reps—man, I’d sprint out there like it was Super Bowl 39. ‘Let’s go boys! Here we go! What play we got?’” “And I started to do really well with those 2 reps. Because I brought enthusiasm, I brought energy.” Embracing Harden’s advice to focus on what he could control and surrender to what he couldn’t control, soon, the 2 reps went up to 4 reps. Then from 4 to 10, “and before you knew it,” Brady said, “with this new mindset that Greg instilled in me—to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you’re getting, not what anyone else is getting, to treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl—eventually, I became the starter.”
And Beautiful Things Can Come From That
On sets shooting movies like The Dark Knight or Inception, the director Christopher Nolan has a reputation among filmmakers for getting incredibly lucky with the weather. Nolan himself says it’s not true. “It’s completely untrue,” Nolan said. “I’m very unlucky with the weather. But I made a decision early on that whatever the weather is, I will shoot.” Even after something seemingly bad happens, “We just shoot—whether it’s pouring rain or the sun is out. And beautiful things can come from that.” He just surfs the conditions of his present circumstances. He just controls what he can control and surrenders to what he can’t. And beautiful things can come from that.