Have you ever gleamed the cube?
Have you ever worried that Hook and his Daggers gang might burn your half pipe down right when you’re Thrashin’?
Have you ever ollied?
No? Then you probably weren’t like me in the seventh grade.
I was an amazing skateboarder. In my head mostly. And on my head for that matter because I had this swooping to one side, short on the other side, old school Tony Hawk haircut. I could talk skateboarding like no one else.
I also almost ripped my nose off my face, fractured my cheekbones and had to have plastic surgery to retain this ridiculous level of handsomeness I currently enjoy. (When you get a nose job, they don’t let you flip through a book of celebrities and request the “Brad Pitt.” That was my expectation going in, but I was wrong. And I had the plastic surgery so that I could breathe, not just for hotness. That was a bonus benefit.)
I think about skateboarding a lot because there are four boards in my office at work. One of them is a Rob Roskopp from Santa Cruz. It was part of a series in which a monster breaks out of the target. I loved that board. I rode it everywhere. I’d cut pictures out of Thrasher magazine and spend hours in my bedroom when it was raining just spinning the wheels and listening to the Swiss bearings hum.
Years later, in my late 20s, I discovered that Santa Cruz was re-releasing the classic designs I grew up with. I bought a replica of my original board. I didn’t put wheels on it, I didn’t use it, I just bought it.
And then I bought another skateboard.
And then I bought another one.
And then I bought another one.
And eventually I had about 10 different old school skateboard decks.
Why? Because sometimes when we’re sad, we try to buy props from the times in our lives when we were happy.
If my life was a movie, then the sixth and seventh grade were pretty good years. High school was still a year away. I knew there were cliques, but they didn’t define my school day yet. I was still good enough at soccer in our small Massachusetts town to think I was great. Youth group was fun and my dad’s church was growing like a wildfire. And I got that amazing first skateboard.
Years later, when I hit some rocky times in my late 20s, I started to look for things that would make me happy. And I remembered being happy in the sixth grade. I started to ask myself questions. “Why was I so happy then? What was it about that time that was so great? What pieces of that time could I recreate right now to distract me from the difficulties of being an adult?”
Skateboards.
As I rewound the movie of me, the prop I saw myself carrying in those happy films was a skateboard. So I bought the same deck I had back then, with the hope that the happiness of those years was somehow intrinsically woven into it.
When it wasn’t, I bought another skateboard. When I realized two skateboards weren’t the key to happiness, I thought, “maybe I need another one.” I kept buying skateboards, hoping that the next one would be “the one.”
Eventually I owned ten skateboards and no greater degree of happiness. If anything, buying props made me sadder because I was forced to admit I couldn’t buy my way back to happy.
Have you ever done that?
Have you ever looked back on a time when you were happy and tried to recreate that time with a prop? An album you loved. A vacation destination you return to with the hope that joy is waiting for you on that beach. A motorcycle you swore to yourself that when you grew up you’d buy it and it would fix everything.
Or maybe a memory isn’t where you seek joy, maybe you chase it in the future, not the past.
If you get the right job, then you’ll be happy.
If you make the right amount of money, then you’ll have joy.
If you get the right degree, then life will make sense.
If you buy the right house, you’ll be content.
But if we’re honest, eventually, a prop is just a prop. It might bring a smile for a day, a week, or maybe even a year, but a prop can’t hold joy any more than a bucket can hold sunshine.
Over the last few years, that’s what surrender has looked like to me. Letting go of my joy props. Recognizing what they are, realizing when something in my life has transitioned from a “hobby that I enjoy,” to a “hero I need to save me.” Because I already have a savior. That role has been filled. And when I chase a purchase as the pathway to peace, I take my eyes off my true source of joy.
Question:
What’s one of your joy props?
