Find the Florence's, John John, Lauryn and baby Dez, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, as content as cats with a trail of blood on their muzzles.
Do you look back on you life at this mid-point and see a vision of pleasure, of sacrifice and discipline and the fruits thus grown, or is your story a litany of weakness and neurosis with little harmonic resonance?
I started poorly, did well through the third decade before crumbling it all into a brutish pile, scarred by my own vandalism and driven by vanity. I judge my decisions with bitterness and a painful harshness though feel no self-pity or sadness, a detached curiosity at how quickly castles can melt into the sand.
There have been a few laughs along the way, howevs, and most of you have hung on for the ride.
In contrast.
The surfer John John Florence, three-times a lady and still only thirty four, has lived a life, at least so far, that will be transformed into a glorious page in the history of humankind
A childhood both difficult and blessed, injuries overcome, a sport dominated, as the French say, from barbe au cul, now, a wife, a gorgeous child and a life lived simply on a million-dollar catamaran.
In his latest missive from the Atlantic, we find the Florence’s, John John, Lauryn and baby Dez, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, as content as cats with a trail of blood on their muzzles.
Beginning one of John John Florence’s movies is a lot like curling up on the sofa with the Bayeux Tapestry.
As Jacques Cousteau said, and which certainly would include John John, “Every explorer I have met has been driven—not coincidentally but quintessentially—by curiosity, by a single-minded, insatiable, and even jubilant need to know.”
Essential.