So here I am, sitting in London International on a 12 hour stop over (they don’t let you out the airport anymore unless you have a visa thanks to some unscrupulous individuals who abused the immigration laws) on my way home after three months on the road and I finally got to watch the Zeitgeist movie and it made me think of what as a surfer I can do to help guide the perception of other individuals on what’s important in life.

And what is it that’s important?

Is it money, power, status, possession, ownership and prowess? Or in our little pond which is the surf world is it our new boards and wetsuits, our place in the pecking order of a line-up, being an aggressive local at a particular beach or whether we are a better surfer then the guy sitting next to us?

Now I live two parallel lives at the moment, one when I’m in South Africa with all my possessions being a nice house and car with a rack of surfboards and a jetski in the garage, a beautiful girlfriend and two designer dogs holding down a good job with a healthy income and all the seeming necessities of the world.

The second is when I spend a few months in the USA, living in an old van that needs to be jump started every day, scraping by on the Rand like every other poor immigrant trying to make it in the land of dreams. Just living day to day, meal to meal and with my biggest issues in the world being where the next tank of gas (sorry petrol – shit I have been away to long) and full stomach is coming from.

So which one is better?

That’s a tough one and I think easier for me to make the call because I don’t have kids but right now in my situation the better would be the latter but doing it in South Africa. Less in the way of possessions and responsibility to the man and more in the way of personal freedom and enlightenment to me is the answer, but that’s just my opinion and in relation to where I am in my life at the moment.

Now I know what some of you are going to say....Fucking Twiggy has gone mad, too many barrels finally cooked his brain but just take a second to think about what just happened to our world in the past few months.

Surely the total collapse of our banking system which was the most corrupt and evil enterprise the world has ever known and the complete demise of the financial world which was the most greedy and destructive endeavour ever created by man has made us all sit up and go what the fuck was I thinking? Did I really buy into this system? Did I really trust those people in their suits and did I really just spend 5 days a week working to help create this mess?

What I think we need to do is sit up and realise that we were all to blame in what has just transpired and unless we all make a comprehensive decision to change our ways in a hurry we don’t have much longer before it’s too late to correct.

Shouldn’t we stop the spending on stuff we don’t need that’s destroying the earth, stop polluting and watch our carbon footprint s and stop procreating at such a ridiculous rate that we all know the world cannot support?

And then shouldn’t we take it one step further and onto a political level. Don’t you think it's ridiculous that the people who you trust with your hard earned money are only in politics for their own gain? And on a local level shouldn’t the people who are responsible for letting Durban degenerate into the state it has be prosecuted and sent to jail? Harsh, I don’t think so, just look at the state of our once beautiful city?

What I do believe however is that with the emergence of Barrack Obama we will begin to see a new type of Politian in the future, hopefully people with real integrity, who honestly have got our best interests at heart. I was in the USA glued to the TV with every other American last week and heard Obama’s presidential speech live and it’s affected me more than any other speech I have ever heard.

Right now the world has hit rock bottom because of the greed associated with people in power both politically and in big business and there is about to be a major shift in how South Africa and the world is governed and run.

We in South Africa have to find and appoint the correct people in these next elections and make sure that they and each of us are held accountable for their actions that adversely affect others. I know I have been harping on about this but believe me it’s more important than any of us realise to get things changed right now before it’s too late.

And on a surfing level, keep those boards and wetsuits a while longer, only use the ski when you absolutely need to, give a lesser surfer a wave some time, don’t claim owner ship of the ocean even if you live across the road and never think you are above someone else just because you can do a better turn then them. It’s just the small start that we as surfers can make towards helping to engineer a shift in global consciousness.

I’m as much to blame as the next guy, probably even more so, but shit, I’m going to try my best!

Come on Twig, to fucking serious buddy!! Sorry, just had to get that off my chest and anyway, I’ll see you at North Beach on Wednesday morning for a week of sick Durban barrels that should wash away all our worries...To easy...ha ha

See ya
Twig

Grant "Twiggy" Baker is a former Mavericks Surf Contest champion and special contributor to TheExtremeScene.com.