Bruce Gold and John John Florence. Two stoke specimens from different points in their surf life.
Common sense and Stab magazine dictates that the older you get, the worse you surf. But this isn’t necessarily true. Your surfing life doesn’t need to decline with age. In fact, a case could be made that surfing, as with youth, is wasted on the young.
Don’t get me wrong, being young was great, and I used to be very skeptical of old people. I loathed the mature students at university as much as the next man. They dressed in beards and earthy hues of corduroy and always had hands up in tutorials. They sat in the student bar with creepy little smiles, nursing half-pints and reading. They never went anywhere without wielding Golden Virginia, 3 cans of Carling and boring stories about LSD. They knew where the lectures were held. And they always bloody knew how to tap the university hardship fund. They were pure arseholes.
I used to feel the same about older surfers, probably for some of the same reasons: They’d figured it out, and I hadn’t. Really it was just jealousy. But to me they were ugly old people who had no right to upstage my youthful exuberance. They always had new boards, kept fit, and paddled faster than they looked. They would glance contemptuously from behind the wheel of a shiny new van as I rummaged through the junk in the footwell of the car I bought on eBay for £25, looking for cigarette papers. And I’d sneer and swear and really just be ever so very annoyed because actually the old bastards surfed better than me.
But now I’m in my 30s, and I get it. Surfing is wasted on the young.
It’s a tragic irony that as our lives ebb away and our bodies decline; our desire to surf better intensifies. Our time is an ever-waning commodity, so we don’t take surfing for granted anymore. Many of us spend our teens and 20s consumed by vices and bad habits. I know I did, and I will always wish I’d dedicated more of my energy to surfing instead of wanton destruction of brain cells, self-esteem, and credit scores.
When you’re young it feels like the waves are endless, that there is a golden path of surf trips stretching towards the horizon. But life happens. Before you know it surf time is limited by the onslaught of commitments: a career, marriage, children, property ownership, declining fitness, family obligations… But there is a plus side; scarcity breeds desire. It’s only when you realize just how important surfing is that you can really begin to appreciate it.
Being older, I’m blessed with hindsight and spurred on by regret. I know how important it is to surf every possible minute, and my life is better for it. I would never pass up waves in favor of parties now. Drinking and socializing will never again take precedent over surfing. At 5 AM I’m not being sick in a stranger’s bin or sitting in A+E, and that’s a step forward. I don’t need to waste time chasing girls anymore either, I’ve got one of the patient, understanding ones who also happens to be pretty. (Yeah, I know, thanks, I’ve done well. I’m kind of a big deal). She’s still a bit mental sometimes, but that’s because she has two X chromosomes. It’s not her fault. It’s all about degrees of mental really. Overall life is vastly improved in my 30s, and that makes surfing better.
I work more now, too. Seemingly by stealth I’ve got a “career” and a passable work ethic which has rubbed off on my surfing. It’s also helped financially. I’m not well off by most standards, but I’m not shy of an entirely unnecessary new surfboard, and I’ve got plenty money for diesel. (Like I said – kind of a big deal. I also have many leather-bound books).
I couldn’t possibly have worked when I was younger, because I was too busy squirming over the chronically cliched “what I really want to do.” (This is all bullshit, by the way. Just do something). After the age of 17, I spent every birthday glum, dwelling on the aging process and things I hadn’t done yet. I wish someone could have told me that the anxiety you feel in early life about “where you’re going” will fade away. Once out of your 20s you relax, life gets easier, less hectic. This doesn’t mean you’ve settled for mediocrity. It just means that you’re composed in who you are, and composure benefits your surfing.
To surf better you also need the ability to reflect. It’s only when you’re older that you can work out the hows and whys. Youngsters neither have the time nor the will nor the patience for any sort of self improvement. The youth have no time for deep self reflection, unless masturbating into a mirror counts. There is so much to learn about surfing that you can’t shortcut, deep learning which requires focus you can only achieve through maturity and experience. A great writer, the late Iain Banks, once vindicated my fondness of procrastination by saying that writing was a “late maturing profession.” I think the same can be applied to surfing.
Surfing is a habit which can offer us tantalizing longevity. Given some sensible decisions and a little care of our bodies, some of us might surf for decades. Our physical abilities will inevitably decline, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get any less from it. Surfing is often beyond the physical, and cognitive joys can last a lifetime. You may well sense this in your youth, but it takes maturity to decipher. In surfing, and in life, it’s only when we get older that we begin to see the intricacies and feel the nuances of the things we do. So don’t worry about getting older, and ignore surf media which would have you believe that surfers gradually expire after the age of 25. You might find that surfing just gets better as you get older. Enjoy it.
