I Was 45 Years Old When I Decided to Learn How to Surf

I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf.

Picture this: The north shore of Oahu—the toughest, most competitive surfing spot on the planet. Fourteen-foot swells. Twenty tattooed locals. And me, 5-foot-8-inches of abject terror. What will get me first, I wondered, the next big wave or the guy to my right with the tattoo on his chest that reads “RIP”?

They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That’s because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.

When I started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people I thought it would be good to meet. Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world. So I started calling up experts in all kinds of fields: trial lawyers, neurosurgeons, CIA agents, embryologists, firewalkers, police chiefs, hypnotists, forensic anthropologists, and even presidents.

Some of them—like Carlos Castaneda, Jonas Salk, and Fidel Castro—were world-famous. Of course, I didn’t know any of these people and none of them knew me. So when I called these people up to ask for a meeting, the response wasn’t always friendly. And even when they agreed to give me some of their time, the results weren’t always what one might describe as pleasant.

Take, for example, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. You’ve heard of him? However, he’d never heard of me. It took me a year of begging, cajoling, and more begging to get to him to agree to meet with me. And then what happened? He ridiculed me and insulted me. But that was okay. I was hoping to learn something from him—and I did, even if it was only that I’m not that interesting to a physicist with no taste for our pop culture.

Over the last 30 years, I’ve produced more than 50 movies and 20 television series. I’m successful and, in my business, pretty well known. I’m a guy who could retire to the golf course tomorrow where the worst that could happen is that my Bloody Mary is watered-down.

So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of thing? The answer is simple: Disrupting my comfort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations—this is the best way I know to keep growing. And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

So maybe I’m not the best surfer on the north shore, but that’s okay. The discomfort, the uncertainty, the physical and mental challenge that I get from this—all the things that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to avoid—they are precisely the things that keep me in the game.

Oscar-winning movie producer Brian Grazer co-founded Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard. They created A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 and other acclaimed films. The Producers Guild of America honored Grazer with its lifetime achievement award in 2001.

I believe in semi-permanent hair dye: The kind that lets you have a few wacky purple-headed weeks in the depressing months of winter term, but leaves you plain and brunette again in time for graduation pictures. The kind that lets you be whoever you want without letting go of how you got there. The kind that lets you embrace those internal contradictions that make up an entire, oxymoronic, complex, complete human being. I believe in hypocrisy, just a little.

Semi-permanent hair dye is about finding security within unlimited freedom. It’s about recognizing what I have in my life and holding on to it, even if only at the base of a follicle, because I also believe in roots.

My mother always tells me that the hair color you’re born with is the one that looks the best on you, and I want to make sure that there’s something inside of me that’s always going to be worth returning to. Maybe the house I lived in with my parents will never be home for me again. Maybe I’ll fall out of touch with people I thought I was pretty close to in high school. Maybe I’ll hate the way a darker brown washes me out. But I’ll know that in 20 to 26 washes, I’ll come back to something that I’ve had naturally forever, and I’ll know it looks pretty good.

Here’s where the hypocrisy comes in. Every time you get away from home, thinking how you’re going to reinvent yourself, you end up hanging on to the things about yourself that are the most familiar. Feeling safe isn’t about setting limits on the outside. It’s about hanging on for dear life to what’s on the inside, no matter how your context changes. Because, honestly, you’ll never know whether you look fantastic as a redhead unless you’ve tried. What you will know is that you have brown to return to, when you’re ready.

I’ve just moved into my first apartment all on my own, and New Jersey has never felt so far away. But this new independence could only come from dependence, from knowing that there are unshakable things in my life that have made me ready to face all the Big Bads in the world. We can’t be toddlers or teenagers forever, and there’s too much out there to experience to make me want to dwell too much in the past. So I do believe in permanent change; just not for my hair.

Amelia Baxter-Stoltzfus is a sophomore anthropology student at the University of Chicago. She wrote her essay when she was still in high school in Princeton, N.J. Since then, her hair has been black, red and purple in addition to her natural brown.

Independently produced for NPR by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

I believe in The Beatles. Although they don't exist anymore, their music is very much alive, even to a 12-year-old like me. As old as the songs are, you can learn a lot about yourself from the lyrics. Listening to them with others and singing along has been important to me and to my family.

Three years ago, my dog Phoebe ran away near our house in Cold Spring, N.Y. Every Friday afternoon, we would drive upstate from Manhattan together as family and dog. My parents never had much music in the car — nothing that we could all agree to listen to except for "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles.

We were really scared when Phoebe took off, but hoped she'd come back soon. She didn't. My friend's Dad hiked into the state park behind our house, miles in, posting signs explaining about our lost dog. A day passed, and still no Phoebe.

We called and called into the woods.

Next thing I knew, my Dad climbed into our station wagon and disappeared. A half an hour later, I saw the headlights of our car and heard the weirdest thing: loud, loud music. It was nine o'clock at night, my dad is in the car alone, and he's blasting Beatles music.

My Dad was really smart, probably the smartest one of any of the people looking for Phoebe. But Mom thought he'd lost his mind. Dad explained he figured Phoebe had been in the car with us all those times when we had nothing else to listen to but The Beatles over and over again. He thought if anything could make her come home, it would be the sound of The Beatles.

Phoebe did come home a few days later. It wasn't The Beatles who got her there; it was a sign a neighbor saw, and the phone number on her collar. But I think back to my Dad playing The Beatles' music so loud we could hear him a half mile away across the lake, and it makes me smile.

My Dad died a few months after my dog ran away, and when I first wrote the essay I was afraid to say that because I knew I wouldn't be able to read it out loud in class without crying. But now when I think of him, I remember his wacky idea to play the family music, and how it made me feel like everything would be okay.

The Beatles don't exist anymore but their music will live in everyone forever. I believe in The Beatles because their music brings people together, and gives us hope.

I believe that people should take pride in what they do, even if it is scorned or misunderstood by the public at large.

I have been a professional skateboarder for 24 years. For much of that time, the activity that paid my rent and gave me my greatest joy was tagged with many labels, most of which were ugly. It was a kids’ fad, a waste of time, a dangerous pursuit, a crime.

When I was about 17, three years after I turned pro, my high school “careers” teacher scolded me in front of the entire class about jumping ahead in my workbook. He told me that I would never make it in the workplace if I didn’t follow directions explicitly. He said I’d never make a living as a skateboarder, so it seemed to him that my future was bleak.

Even during those dark years, I never stopped riding my skateboard and never stopped progressing as a skater. There have been many, many times when I’ve been frustrated because I can’t land a maneuver. I’ve come to realize that the only way to master something is to keep it at — despite the bloody knees, despite the twisted ankles, despite the mocking crowds.

Skateboarding has gained mainstream recognition in recent years, but it still has negative stereotypes. The pro skaters I know are responsible members of society. Many of them are fathers, homeowners, world travelers and successful entrepreneurs. Their hairdos and tattoos are simply part of our culture, even when they raise eyebrows during PTA meetings.

So here I am, 38 years old, a husband and father of three, with a lengthy list of responsibilities and obligations. And although I have many job titles — CEO, Executive Producer, Senior Consultant, Foundation Chairman, Bad Actor — the one I am most proud of is “Professional Skateboarder.” It’s the one I write on surveys and customs forms, even though I often end up in a secondary security checkpoint.

My youngest son’s pre-school class was recently asked what their dads do for work. The responses were things like, “My dad sells money” and “My dad figures stuff out.” My son said, “I’ve never seen my dad do work.”

It’s true. Skateboarding doesn’t seem like real work, but I’m proud of what I do. My parents never once questioned the practicality behind my passion, even when I had to scrape together gas money and regarded dinner at Taco Bell as a big night out.

I hope to pass on the same lesson to my children someday. Find the thing you love. My oldest son is an avid skater and he’s really gifted for a 13-year-old, but there’s a lot of pressure on him. He used to skate for endorsements, but now he brushes all that stuff aside. He just skates for fun and that’s good enough for me.

You might not make it to the top, but if you are doing what you love, there is much more happiness there than being rich or famous.

Tony Hawk got his first skateboard when he was nine years old. Five years later, he turned pro. Hawk’s autobiography and video games have been best-sellers, while his foundation has funded skate-park construction in low-income communities across America.