“It means this. Duh!” Photo: Steven Wilcox//Unsplash
Have you ever tried to explain to a non-surfer how important surfing is in your life?
It doesn’t matter who it is: friend, family member, stranger — their eyes glaze over.
Part of surfing’s mystique rests in how it binds itself to some people and never lets go. Of course, many surfers sacrifice jobs, relationships, and more of the sacred principles of “adulthood” for a life full of waves. Modern-day, average-Joe surfers like me often have more humble dreams: a place to sleep within walking distance to a surf break, maybe some remote work to pay the bills and a partner who doesn’t mind sand in the shower.
When I’ve tried to explain to friends and family members how crucial surfing has become in my life it sounds privileged and at times, ridiculous. Perhaps that’s because all the ways in which we describe surfing: the challenge, the euphoria, the adrenaline; can seemingly also be applied to countless other activities. So what if you’re a “surfer,” people think? Can’t you mountain bike, ski, hike, kayak, skate, rock climb, and on and on? More importantly: can’t you be an adult, suck it up, and focus on real shit?
My first instinct — admittedly often wrong — is to try to explain that for a surfer, riding waves can prove just as fulfilling as other parts of their life that many deem “essential.” Spending time with family and friends. Good food. Sex. Netflix. But clearly…this gets sticky. Am I suggesting that riding a sick wave and having a child are interchangeable? No. But I am suggesting that people often orient their lives around having children (and where they might go to school) or their occupation (that they love and/or hate) — so why not do the same with something that provides such a unique sense of joy?
Practically, I can point to the fact that when I get to surf regularly, I am a happier, fitter, and more relaxed person (my wife concurs that when I can’t surf for a while, I’m not super fun to be around). Unfortunately, I must follow these more logical explanations with seemingly over-baked sentiments like without surfing, my life is simply not the same.
Heavy, I know.
One reason that surfing inhabits some of us more than other stuff is that being submerged in the ocean taps into our animalistic side. The Mammalian Dive Reflex, popularized by the work of author James Nestor (Deep, Breath) is a collection of automatic physiological reflexes that activate when we submerge ourselves in cold water — our ability to hold our breath underwater, albeit temporarily, like whales and dolphins. Surfing therefore taps us into one of the core tenets of being human: survival.
Emotionally, surfing also carries a lot of weight. Riding waves is often a double-edged sword of elation and frustration, but it is rare to finish a session not feeling uplifted. Riding waves has the power to transport us into a flow state, to blot out our worries and concerns, to activate our pleasure sensors, crank our adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine, and generally increase our self-esteem. (If you’re not smiling during your session, a friend used to tell me, you’re doing it wrong.)
Surfing also extricates us from all the vices of our technologically spiked world: social media and the endless stream of bullshit comparisons it creates, endless Reddit holes of misinformation, death scrolling, the fact that ChatGPT knows you’re a kook at heart. All of these false realities pull us away from the true experiences waiting for us in the outside world.
Riding waves is all about the feel of the board under your bare feet, the sensation of making the drop, or the carve during a wrap. But it’s more complex than that. Surfing may be a sensory experience, and its visual representation is often linked to sex appeal; but the flip side to the glut of tan skin and lean bodies that make up surf contests is surfing’s resolute need for hard work, grit and toughness. Surfing is the cold, dark walk across slick rocks in a wetsuit still soaked from the night before, shivering, in solitary pursuit of one of the finest feelings in the world. It never offers us a sure thing, an easy answer or a guarantee. Instead, surfing is illogical and unpredictable and sometimes, absolutely fucked. You might slip on those rocks before you even get in. You might get bashed against the very same rocks on your first wave. Or, you might have a dreamy session that you’ll remember until the day you die.
Surfing is also remarkably fleeting. While you can summon a ride, a meal or a date with your fingertips at any time of day, surfing is fickle, and exists outside of our cellular foxholes. It also has the power to overwhelm us at a whim. I walked the dog down to the beach the other day at sunset and was surprised that an early arriving swell. In a few seconds, I became utterly consumed by the question of whether I had the time to run home, change, and run back with my board before the sun set or the wind changed. Windows of surf open and close with a snap. If we don’t make it, the ocean doesn’t give a shit.
Still, one of the biggest reasons that it can be hard to admit how important surfing is to us, is wrapped up in social norms. As we grow older, our lives indisputably become driven by our families and careers. In this context, such devotion to riding a water toy can seem childish, and even more insignificant, strangely, than getting a jog in or going to the gym.
However, surfing surpasses the significance of a quick, “normal” workout done just for the end goal, and not for the sake of the experience, or the inherent risk involved. Artist and shaper Donald Brink asserts that surfers have a “relationship” with their surfing, one that links us to the activity in complex ways and evolves over time.
Part of that evolution is linked to how much we value our time spent in the ocean. Regrets are a normal part of life, right? We chose the wrong sandwich for lunch, we took the wrong career path, we chose the wrong partner, we said the wrong thing at the wrong time. But I’ve never regretted going surfing. Not once. In fact, surfing helps us deal with the cloudy wake of questionable decisions by yanking us back to the now. Never are we more present than when we stroke into a screaming body of water.
Surfing is fundamentally and conceptually basic, but it’s also intrinsically concrete and real. You can’t misinterpret its danger. You can’t deep fake the wave crashing on your head or the shallow, sharp reef under your feet.
As the world turns machine, surfing stays unapologetically instinctual. Surfing encapsulates sadness and love, frustration and joy and pain — the entire depth of our fragile emotions in the weight of the board under your arm. To surf is to take part in a fundamental quest for adventure in a world more and more full of padded corners and safeguards and warnings.
Surfing, then, is everything to me. But it might mean nothing to you.
And that’s totally cool.
More waves for me.
