Man believes his accumulated bad luck has earned him a cosmic refund

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Local Demands The Sea Honor A Debt Of Good Waves He Believes He Has Accrued

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA — A local surfer who has endured a long run of bad sessions, flat days, and poor conditions has become convinced that the ocean now owes him a good session, that his accumulated suffering has earned him a cosmic refund of good waves, which he expects the sea to deliver in recognition of his patient endurance.

“The ocean owes me,” explained surfer Dane Holloway, 37, with the certainty of a man owed a debt. “I have endured weeks of bad sessions. Flat days, blown-out conditions, getting skunked over and over. I have paid my dues. I have suffered. And now the ocean owes me a good one. A great session. To balance the scales. I have earned it through all I have endured. The sea has been taking from me, and now it is time for it to give back. I am owed. And I expect to be paid.”

The Cosmic Debt

According to the Institute for Surf Psychology, which surfers find relatable, Holloway has come to believe in “a cosmic ledger in which suffering earns future reward.” “Mr. Holloway believes the ocean owes him a good session,” explained Dr. Wilhelmina Vale. “He has endured bad conditions, and he reasons that this suffering has accrued a debt, that the ocean must now repay him with good waves to balance the cosmic ledger. This is the gambler’s fallacy dressed in cosmic clothing. The ocean keeps no ledger. Past bad sessions do not earn future good ones. Each session’s conditions are independent of all previous sessions. But Mr. Holloway has constructed a moral accounting in which his endurance is a credit the ocean must honor. He is owed, he believes, and he awaits payment from a sea that owes him nothing.”

Holloway has grown increasingly impatient as the ocean fails to deliver the good session he believes he is owed. “It has been weeks,” he complained. “Weeks of bad sessions. The debt keeps growing. And still the ocean does not pay. Every flat day, every blown-out session, adds to what I am owed. The good session that is coming will have to be incredible to balance all of this. The ocean is deep in debt to me now. And I am getting impatient. I have endured enough. It is time for the sea to honor its obligations and give me the session I have earned through all my suffering.”

The Indifferent Ledger

Experts note that the ocean maintains no such ledger and owes Holloway nothing. “The ocean does not track Mr. Holloway’s sessions,” said Dr. Vale. “It does not know he has suffered through bad conditions. It does not owe him a good session. Each day’s waves are produced by physical forces entirely independent of his past experiences. The belief that accumulated bad luck earns future good luck is a well-known fallacy. A coin that has landed tails ten times is no more likely to land heads on the eleventh. Similarly, Mr. Holloway’s run of bad sessions makes a good one no more likely. But he has constructed a cosmic debt, a ledger of suffering and reward, that exists only in his mind, and he awaits payment that the indifferent ocean has no obligation or ability to make.”

Holloway’s belief in the cosmic debt has, experts note, set him up for continued disappointment. “He expects a good session as repayment,” said Dr. Vale. “But the ocean will deliver good and bad sessions at random, regardless of what he believes he is owed. When the next bad session comes, as it inevitably will at some point, he will feel not just disappointed but cheated, robbed, denied a debt he believes he is owed. His cosmic accounting transforms ordinary bad luck into injustice, ordinary variation into broken promises. He has set himself up to feel perpetually wronged by an ocean that never agreed to his ledger and cannot honor a debt it does not know it owes.”

The Entitled Endurance

Experts note that Holloway’s sense of being owed reflects a transactional view of his relationship with the ocean. “He treats his endurance of bad sessions as an investment that must pay off,” said Dr. Vale. “As if surfing through bad conditions is a deposit that earns interest in the form of future good waves. But surfing is not transactional. The ocean is not a bank. Enduring bad sessions earns nothing but the experience of having endured them. Mr. Holloway’s belief that his suffering has purchased a good session is a category error, applying the logic of debt and repayment to a natural phenomenon that operates by physics, not by moral accounting. He has surfed through bad days and concluded the ocean owes him, when in fact he is simply a surfer who has had some bad luck, owed nothing, awaiting a refund that will never come.”

Holloway remains convinced that his good session is overdue and that the ocean will eventually pay its debt. “It has to come,” he insisted. “I have endured too much. The ledger is too far in my favor. The ocean cannot keep taking forever. Eventually it will give me the great session I am owed, and when it does, it will all have been worth it, the weeks of suffering redeemed by the payment of my cosmic debt.” Experts noted that the good session, when it eventually came, would arrive not as payment for his suffering but as random good luck, indistinguishable from chance, owed to no one, a coincidence Holloway would interpret as the settling of a debt that existed only in his own moral imagination.”

The Awaited Refund

Holloway continues to await the good session he believes the ocean owes him, his sense of cosmic debt growing with each bad day, certain that his accumulated suffering will eventually be repaid in good waves. “The ocean owes me,” he repeated, scanning the flat conditions for the great session he believed was his due. “And someday, soon, it will pay. All this suffering, all this endurance, will be redeemed. The sea cannot keep me in the red forever. The good session is coming. It has to come. I have earned it.” The ocean, keeping no ledger and owing no debt, continued to produce its conditions at random, indifferent to Holloway’s accounting, while he waited, impatient and entitled, for a cosmic refund that the sea did not know it owed and would never knowingly pay, a man owed nothing, awaiting everything, from an ocean that had never agreed to the terms of his imaginary debt. For genuine background, see the American Psychological Association, and for further detail, the National Institutes of Health covers the real subject.

More nonsense at The Beaverton.

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