Vol 215
April 3, 2025

'The Natural Mystic'
As curated by Mike Lynch

There’s an energy that exists, somewhere between the horizon and the earth under your feet and it’s called, going low.

Almost every night, lately, I find myself lying awake in bed looking up at the ceiling, stressing about what failures I’ve had and what shots I’ve missed. It’s a haunting I can’t fully explain in words but I can tell you, I would not wish this stress on my worst enemy. As cliche as that might sound, it's this odd truth that I cannot get away from so I’ve decided to level up and find peace with it. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.. So they say, right?

Look, it’s not that I am trying to build Roma or anything close to it but more so that I believe in my dream so wholeheartedly, that it feels like my lifetime accomplishment worth chasing is as equivalent to a Roman Empire as I’ll ever understand.

Let me re-phrase, Imperfects is my Life’s Work and as it lives and breathes, so too, do I. It’s a really challenging existence, a type of lonely I will never be able to share with you no matter how poetic I find myself; it's not that I want to boast of my unique pain but more so that I want to express how valuable it is to live out your heavy truth, to chase your reality, to be your best version of your dreaming self and know what it is to force yourself to be your own hero in your own story. 

I’ll dig in.

As a young man, I had dreams of portraits, Pick-6s to the house, 7 stair backside boardslides, perfect cornering, released top turns, sepia tones, perfectly screened foam turned into usable art, and denim and canvas. As a grown man, I’ve realized all of those feelings, in epic format. I have a lot of regrets and I wouldn’t change any of them because they all amount to my sense of humility, my ingenuity and one in the same, my willingness to continue learning without any ego. Most days these days, I am not enjoying myself because I have dedicated my energy to the battle of student life but my reality is that of needing to be a leader. It is a beautiful contradiction. As a Father, a Husband, a Big Brother, an Eldest, a Boss, I don’t find myself enjoying the fruits of being able to walk away from the labor; I am the labor.

When you ding a board so good that you need to re-shape a part of the board to make it flow again, you have no choice but to surf that shape differently. This is a Miyagi level lesson that I’ve learned over the years while building surfboards and it applies to life, in general. I share this with you now because I can confidently state that adaptation and the rise toward adversity are truly the only selfish goodness that we end up holding close to us throughout this human experience. Mostly meaning, these are the elements of the human experience that shape us, continually and wholly. 

Enter: GOLF. 

No, I am not looking to attempt a new market play on golf (we are what we are at Imperfects and it’s Mindful Utility for everything, everyone, all the time in the most human form: Self-Expression), I am just honestly talking about the goodness that this self-managed, self-inflicted gaming can produce. Most days, I am a solid 8-10 handicap. I hit the ball well and occasionally, I do it all great, in orchestra and it leads to crazy good scores.

The level of confidence this provides me is just odd. I don’t know how else to describe it, it's like I am on cloud 9 when I shoot a few shots over par on a tough course and there is no reason I should feel such a sense of accomplishment - I don’t make my money golfing, I don’t train to be a professional at this, yet, the feeling is visceral.

On the other hand, when I play the game poorly, it’s worse than getting kicked in the nuts by my 6 year old boy in a backyard wrestling match. When the swing is in bad shape, I have a strange sense of failure and such a broken ego, I can’t even look you in the eyes when I am checking out at the grocery store. Wild. Here’s the hang up - I shot my first front 9 under par (by one stroke) this week and instead of feeling the huge high I expected, I felt some strange level of peace. Why can something so silly as a good session provide such peace? It felt exactly the same as a perfect session in perfect head high glassy surf at my favorite local watering hole.

Ok, call me classic Type A with therapy needs but nah, it's more than that. It boils down to this simple human thing which we can all attest to in our own way. Some legends have called it “Cowbell” along the way, some have called it “Flow,” Bob called it “Natural Mystic,” I think I’ll call it ‘Going Low.’ It’s this perfect human paradox of surface level and extra deep as the same time, necessary and unnecessarily important, all in one. Yea, believe that. I was always aware of this feeling I have been chasing but man it is so fleeting in my personal case of life that I have a hard time cataloging that feeling and it will never get old. You know what I mean? 

Anyway, that’s all folks. Happy Little Friday!