Four Things to Make You Feel A Little Less Shitty About Everything

1. There Will Always Be More Waves

It takes a special kind of masochism to check the waves online when you’re unable to surf, but we do it all the time anyway. It’s long been a favorite means of self-torture for countless surfers, whether you’re bound to your desks between 9 and 5, away from the coast with your partner because you’ll say yes to any plan 6 months in advance, or eying your phone while holding a plate of question-able casserole at Uncle Milo’s house for Thanksgiving. During COVID-19, how-ever, this type of masochism morphed into something else entirely.

In late March and early April, while many of the world’s beaches were under lockdown and decent swells were pop-ping up everywhere from California to Portugal to Indonesia, surfers tuned into Surfline and Instagram to see something many have never seen in their lives: some of the world’s most iconic waves going off without a single person out. Based on the comments on social media, this filled people with a wide range of emotions. Some were upset by the perceived waste, others were in awe of the unfathomable quality usually obscured by crowds, and a few expressed an unexpected sentiment—some version of “Yeah, it needed a break.”

And maybe those waves did. In South-ern California, spots like Malibu and Lower Trestles have been carpeted with surfers on every ripple of swell for de-cades. Seeing them completely empty, just doing their thing, made many just feel grateful that these waves exist at all—there they are, perfectly peeling away, completely indifferent to our wants, needs and egos. Because that’s what waves do. And they always will.

All said, more than 200 N95 masks made