The Surfer Who Didn’t Even Surf
I started surfing during my 2018/19 exchange year in California. I’ve always been into boardsports, starting with my dad teaching me how to snowboard when I was 10 (or rather, dragging me along for his own shredding adventures). I started skateboarding when I was 12, and wakeboarding has popped in and out of my life sporadically whenever water and a boat were involved. So, it felt natural to give surfing a try. I was likely also trying to justify my surfer demeanor, knowing that I couldn’t really use words like gnarly and stoked without actually ever having ridden a wave.
So, being the kook that I am, it’s only fitting that I impart some unsolicited wisdom and draw some parallels between two things that I’m not particularly good at: surfing and life.
Paddling Out
Paddling out is at best an inconvenience, most of the time unpleasant, and every so often downright awful. There’s something deeply disheartening about getting tossed and tumbled by already broken waves, only to show up at the lineup and get seemingly reset to the shore by an incoming set. And yet, time and time again surfers face the same dreaded paddle-out with relentless optimism.
I think that paddling out and surfing a deeply intertwined. Paddling out isn’t really something that you do in order to surf, it is surfing. Without it, I think that surfing would be inherently different, as the work you put in to get to the lineup and the constant tension of being thrown back into the struggle make finally catching and riding a wave that much more fulfilling.
The same is true in life, where struggle and suffering is a constant. But our struggles and our suffering are an inherently necessary part of our joy and fulfillment. They set the backdrop for the greatest moments in our lives, and without them, life loses it’s wonder and risk.
The key to dealing with paddling out is to not really deal with it at all. Instead of seeing it as a barrier to entry and quite literally struggling against the tide, you’re better off accepting it as an inevitable part of surfing. The ocean isn’t going to listen to your objections and frustration, and neither is life, so struggling against the waves only causes frustration. You don’t need to agree with the paddle-out pushing against you, you just need to accept it and willingly face it, because your wave is waiting for you just past the break.
Hold-Downs
I’ll go on a brief tangent now and talk about a third thing I’m not particularly good at: physics. In the theory of special relativity, time dilation refers to the phenomenon that two observers can experience time differently. I’ll now go ahead and incorrectly use this definition to talk about time slowing down while being held down by a wave.
The same force that is harnessed to ride a wave and converted into joy, can also come crashing down right on your head and force you below the surface tumble you around like dirty laundry in a washing machine. It’s one of the most common reasons I’ve heard why people don’t end up picking up surfing or trying it again. After having struggled to paddle out to the break, novice surfers are met with a menacing wave ready to hold them under while they’re already short on breath.
When you’re being held down, it can feel like forever. Time has slowed down and that you’ve been thrown into the laundry machine to be tossed around for what feels like an eternity. As you emerge up to the surface to gasp for air, you’re exhausted and wonder how long you were under. Then you catch a brief glimpse of your friends sitting contently beyond the break before you get pulled under once more by the next wave.
In life, sometimes time seems to dilate and wherever you are now feels like where you’ll be stuck for eternity. As we’re being thrashed around by the endless waves coming in from life’s horizon, we can’t help but struggle as we’re pulled below the surface. The thing is though, we won’t be under forever, and eventually we’ll be able to swim back up for air and paddle back out to the break. The hard part, both in life and in surfing, is believing this while being pummeled underwater. That’s not always easy.
Riding the Wave
I’ve found that surfing as a sport is really different from skating and snowboarding. There’s an inherent difference in the dynamic nature of the ocean compared to a static concrete ramp or powder on the face of a mountain. When surfing, you’re literally sitting in mother nature’s palm, waiting for her to either relax her grip and deliver your wave, or clutch her grasp and pull you under once more. It’s odd, because when riding a wave you feel in ultimate control, and yet in the blink of an eye, the ocean can rain down it’s mighty fist and humble you.
Surfing has an almost spiritual aura about it, and from my experiences I can understand why. There’s a sense of surrender when you’re sitting in the water, waves passing under your board as you wait contently for the horizon to deliver your next ride. We like to think that we’re the one’s controlling the waves when we ride them, but that’s not it really. Those waves are gonna break no matter if there are surfers in the water or not, so all we’re really doing by surfing them is joining along for whatever ride they take us on. The fact that we extract joy from those rides is really just a side-effect, it’s nothing inherent to the waves, they are indifferent.
The same holds true in life. Life’s endless horizon brings in waves of all different shapes and sizes. Some of them crash on to our heads, and some of them cascade over us and envelop us in a barrel of unparalleled experience. In those moments of intense fulfillment, we’re prone to believe the illusion that we have dominion over our lives, but the truth is, we have absolutely no control over these waves coming in. The only thing we can really control is our reaction to the incoming waves. So we must surrender the illusion that we are in control, because the only thing we can control is whether we want to try and ride the waves that beckon on the horizon.
