I always thought he was sort of god-like. In my mind I saw big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, and his pro volleyball player wife Gabrielle Reece, walking along the Hawaiian beach like Adonis and Aphrodite. Two almost perfect physical specimens – both graceful and beautiful, strong and vital.
But they have been married for decades, and Laird is currently 61-years old. A few months ago I said to myself, “What is the physical cost of having engaged in high-level athletic activities for decades? Surfing monster waves since the 1990s?” I knew tennis star Jimmy Connors needed both his hips replaced by 50-years of age – a direct result of decades grinding it out on the pro tennis tour. A good chunk of my tennis buddies who are a decade or so older also have artificial hips surgically implanted to replace the worn out natural ones. Can a person spend most of their life competing at the highest levels without paying the price in terms of serious injury? I suspected not.
I would even go as far as saying the following: if you are a serious athlete beyond a certain age and have no lingering injuries, you are not trying hard enough. Everyone at a certain level of athleticism has medical issues from the past, and they manage those injuries, to one degree or another. A star shortstop in baseball or point guard in basketball might seem like the very paragon of power and skill in athletic competition, even when they are still relatively young, but rest assured they have physical therapists who help them compensate for old injuries and work around and manage pain, as best they can. This is just reality. But athletes don’t generally like to highlight their physical difficulties.
Sure enough, this is what ChatGBT told me when I asked about 61-year old Laird Hamilton and the toll his chosen life path has taken on his body:
Wow! That was eye-opening to read. Sobering. And it has the ring of truth: there are the benefits of Laird’s active lifestyle, but there is also the cost. Hamilton is in great shape and is almost always moving, but he manages injuries and pain on a daily basis. He loves the vitality of the ocean, big-wave surfing, and staying physically fit – it is how he stays comfortable in his body, even as it ages and aches. Laird’s body is his good friend and close ally in all his athletic endeavors. But the body also gives him pain on almost a continual basis. In fact, the pain and the pleasure both come from the same place: physical motion. I suspect the pain and the pleasure come to be almost the same thing. The pain is not so bad, after all, and the pleasure is tinged with accompanying pain. I can relate.
Taking into account Laird Hamilton’s life, I would have been surprised if the reality were otherwise. Very surprised.
Because I am in somewhat the same boat. I am a few years younger than Laird, and I am nowhere near the physical specimen. But in my own way I have also been a serious athlete for decades and remain so today, and my body similarly shows the wear and tear. I manage old injuries which will never go away, not entirely, and I take great care to listen to what my body is telling me in terms of overtraining or incipient injury. I try and remember that my body is always talking to me, even as I strain to understand exactly what it is saying. This is subtle, delicate, and important work. I never get it quite right. If you watch me on the tennis court, you might think everything is fine. But I am constantly managing this injury or that. Pain and pleasure are inextricably mixed in my bodily feels. I suspect it is the same with Laird.
But then I typed in “Laird Hamilton” into YouTube and propaganda videos like this come up:
This is just Grade A propagandist bullshit. They are highlighting Hailton’s physical fitness and associated health, from diet and exercise, as if it were some sort of fountain of youth. “Age is just a number!” runs this argument. They are trying to sell you something. The Internet, especially social media, is full of this sort of hucksterism.
A more perceptive viewer might think, “This is too good to be true.” They might wonder, “Will decades of big-wave surfing have damaged Laird Hamilton’s body at all?” Those would be good questions to ask.
But whether it is some Instagram influencer’s sales pitch – they are often aspirational, not reality – a good bit of lying in favor of looking one’s best, and not a complex panorama of all the good and bad in a person or situation. Again, it tends toward the propagandistic.
I suspect that is what social media is mostly about nowadays: curating an Image or a Message for the marketplace. “Laird Hamilton, a god who walks among men – ageless and invincible.”
No, Laird Hamilton is a man of flesh and blood, not an immortal god. He grows old. Laird has injuries – maybe more than other men, because of the lifestyle he chose. Pain and pleasure are equal parts of Laird’s life, and he is getting older even as we speak. Hamilton has accomplished so much, and he is still a mighty physical presence in the ocean and out; but he has paid the price in injury, and his joints ache almost all the time. His body probably aches the least precisely when he is working out. B the joint pain will return later. Tomorrow morning he will struggle upon getting out of bed, like aging men have struggled for time immemorial.
I have never indulged in that propagandist Internet presence, and for many years I have never to no social media presence because the whole medium is so compromised. I am not trying to sell anything to anyone. I am not acting outrageously or saying stupid shit just to get attention. On my blog, I try to get to the truth of what I am thinking, or how I see myself or the world. I try to acknowledge ugly realities, to get to the complicated truth of the matter. Only that which rings true, in the end, has the power to move. “What is true?” “Que sais je?” That might take some time to explain. Long-form text is my medium. Does this mark me as old-fashioned?
Because that would seem like almost an out-of-date form of communication in 2025. Most people’s eyeballs glaze over in frustration and fatigue nowadays if they have to read more than a paragraph or two online. (“Look at the wall of text which is this essay, Rich!”) Blogging is dead, or next to dead. We live in an age of meretricious Instagram images and 146-character Twitter blasts. Everyone is trying to market something – an image of glamour to sell, or a political angle to pitch. Capitalism has eaten the Internet almost entire and turned it into a shopping mall: entertainment, gossip, shopping, sports, and porn. That is what populates the pipes of online media streaming everywhere all the time. It is who we are.
Everyone of note attends to their public image and seeks to remain relevant: you are your brand, and your brand is you. Change and attract attention, or grow stagnant and be ignored. The best example of this is Donald Trump, an attention seeking real-estate developer turned reality TV star morphed into populist political reformer elected President of the United States twice. Trump the chameleon is whatever he thinks it is to his advantage to be at any particular moment; he does not have principles and convictions, he has interests and sympathies. Trump the manchild is malleable in the extreme; he is our first social media president. Trump is a creature of our times. This fact does not speak well about our time, in my opinion. Just the opposite.
Laird Hamilton, in contrast, is a throwback to a pre-digital era. He seems pretty much the same guy he was when he appeared on ESPN riding “monster waves” back in 1994 or when he married the beautiful Gabby Reece in 1997. He is not contorting himself to garner public attention; Laird is no Trumpian shapeshifter. He is true to himself. He is not selling anything. Laird stands for something. That something has not substantially changed. It has matured.
Same with me, too. I am the same man I was almost three decades ago when I first started my webpage, more or less.
In fact, Laird and I are – if anything – only deeper and more profound examples today of who were thirty years ago. If you want to understand the oak tree today, look at the acorn it first was long ago. Roots deep in the ground, branches which don’t bend in the storm – we are strong, and will remain so for some time moving forward, if not forever, joint pain notwithstanding.
And it will be a cold day in hell before Laird or I try to sell you anything on Instagram or TikTok – before we will decline into the role of Internet “influencer” in a dissembling time.
Except that this is not true.
I came across one YouTube video on Laird Hamilton which gave me the idea for this blogsite post, and did some cursory research on him on ChatGBT with respect to his injuries. Then I wrote this essay.
But I did further research on Laird Hamilton afterwards, and I found that he was indeed a social media influencer. He was truly that guy trying to sell something! (Maybe this essay was more about me than Laird?) Here is what ChatGBT said:
Like almost everyone else nowadays, Laird Hamilton was not just a person but a Brand™. Laird was selling “Superfood” and “Laird Apparel” online and off:
This rubbed me wrong.
But why?
“You begrudge Laird, and his wife Gabby, trying to make a buck?”
“Everyone’s gotta eat, Rich!”
“Laird and Gabby have two college-aged daughters right now. They have their college tuition to cover! That costs a lot of money!”
“You already have a job, Rich. Being a celebrity entrepreneur, even an aging one, is Laird’s job. Cut him some slack!”
Maybe. And Laird and his wife might have an easier time paying for his two daughters going to college than my wife and I will.
But I still wish Laird was a warrior-monk who would not stoop to making YouTube videos hawking his snake oil. I suspect Laird might be the big wave surfer sine qua non, but as a businessman he seems like a fish out of water – like a veteran surfer agile in the water but uncomfortable on land. It seems a poor fit. That doesn’t mean it won’t make money. We shall see.
A few questions: Is being an Internet businessman incompatible with being a big wave surfer? Would his wife Gabby, who already had a podcast and whatnot, give Laird endless shit for not seeking to capitalize on whatever fame he enjoyed? Is the wife the impetus for Laird’s business ventures?
“We have bills to pay, Laird. College tuition to pay. We need money to live. Pay for our retirement and old age. Why not launch our Brand™? This is an opportunity not to be squandered!”
Maybe.
I suspect Laird would be happy surfing and working out all day and that’s it.
But the Laird Hamilton brand? Is that so bad? Recognizing a business opportunity when you see it and taking advantage of it?
I dunno.
Maybe it is just that everyone is a Brand™ nowadays.
To end this essay, I will screenshot another query I made to ChatGBT on that question:
What an ugly, meretricious, dishonest time to be alive.
Or not?
Maybe somewhere in the middle?
And Laird Hamilton?
Somewhat sarcastically, I titled this essay, “I Wanted a Warrior-Monk, I Got a Superfood CEO.”
Is Laird a “badass” pioneer big-wave surfer who over decades has built a niche for himself in the world of fitness and health? Or is he a narcissistic self-promoting huckster who is mostly a “difficult” self-involved loner?
Or is he (and his wife) somewhere in the middle?
