The Salt Water Buddha

I can't say why, because I really don't like reading about religion, but I do like reading books about adventures in life and how someone can learn from that. I'm reading the Salt Water Buddha now, which is one young man's journey of self-discovery. He runs away from home to live and surf in Hawaii and learns along the way that the journey itself is the important part. This is either the main recurring theme in books like this or the one I always pick up on. It started out with me saying, "one day I will be retired and boy will I have fun traveling and seeing the world then!". I later looked at the world of declining fortunes and realized that I might be lucky to keep a job at Home Depot so I can have medical insurance when I'm that old. So, I go on the adventures now and have little bits of my retirement in advance.
The other main theme is the quest I seem to be on to find that bit of wisdom that will finally make everything come together and make sense. From my readings (and even Kung Fu Panda!) I can already figure that the wise old man I am seeking will end up being me.
I have actually started getting some of this into my daily life. I now truly understand that surfing is not the 3 seconds on the face of a wave or the number of waves I rode in a particular session. Surfing starts with me pulling the bar of wax from my drawer and smelling it, driving over the causeway and getting my first whiff of saltwater, and even the struggle through the whitewater to get outside. The trick is loving every single part of it. You really don't have to be that smart to know this, you just need to be reminded once in a while...at least I do.