Just appreciate what you got. If you’re surfing, you’ve got it good. Photo: Matthew Hume//Unsplash
I am in the midst of every surfer’s bad dream: six months without surfing. But I’m not physically injured, the ailment is geographical.
My job takes me all over the world. Sometimes we score a Pacific island chain. Other times we end up in the middle of nowhere, like I am now… stranded without any swell. Towards the end of this dry spell I’ve realized that … like you… I am addicted to surfing.
To the average person, the mind of a surfer seems easy to read: a stoned, happy-go-lucky hippie. But surfer’s have deeper psychological complexes. There’s a constant ping-pong battle between the dark side — addiction — and the light side — peace.
When it all goes right, surfing offers a unique reward: unadulterated bliss. Long Beach legend Bill Hamilton, father of Laird, nailed it on the head when saying, “Sliding a wave removes our brains out of the ordinary and slips us into the extraordinary of being there now. No more worries about mortgages or strife of being poor or rich. When you enter the domain of an ocean cylinder, that moment, those split seconds belong to the Zen part of just being. Period.”
As surfers, we can remember the endless times that surfing gave us this sweet escape. The feeling is addictive. The flood of biochemicals from the fight-or-flight response unlocks a flow state. The negative voice in your head takes a backseat to the raw rush of experience.
We return home having found peace, and can handle all of the noise that a modern life brings. Anyone whose partner is a serious surfer can recall a time that their significant other was in some type of mood, and the only remedy was to fling them into the ocean to wash it off.
That’s surfing at its best: a practice that makes us better people.
But at its worst, surfing becomes an addiction. A perpetual hunt for something that escapes us. We say, “Just one more wave,” or “It was better yesterday,” because what we have is never enough.
Surf author Thad Ziolkowski detailed the dark side of surfing when saying, “Surfing has a destructive edge. It can make you isolated…impulsive.” The search for the next wave preoccupies us, makes us distant.
We might ditch work, or family (like the time honored California tradition of surfing before, or during, Thanksgiving dinner to chase a late-fall, early-winter swell). The strains on our obligations — career and family, because when we miss out on surfing, that’s what they are, obligations — are a small price to pay to find our own version of Zen. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.
But what happens when you completely remove the surfer from the surf — say, cast them high and dry, without the remote possibility for waves?
At first, it was denial. The sights and sounds of a new world distracted me, and for a while, I naively thought that I could forget about surfing. Then, as pictures from the latest winter swell poured in from friends, I pined for a surf. I began to check hometown reports again, which gave way to anxiety, or fear of missing out. I couldn’t enjoy my time here because mentally I was there. It felt like a withdrawal. I craved a surf like a junkie. A two-foot, onshore rain, freezing-cold surf. That would calm my nerves.
The realization came suddenly. Somewhere from the unplumbed depths of my music library, Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi solved the riddle: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” I called to mind the countless days at home, when I paddled out on a two-foot rainy day and came out of the water angrier than I got in. “It was better yesterday.” In my current state, the dark days of crap surf were all I could ask for.
There won’t always be good surf, there won’t always be bad surf, and sometimes there won’t be any surf at all. The good, the bad, and the ugly. We all have the patience and skill to ride the highs and lulls of the ocean, but the real battle is learning how to ride the highs and lows within yourself.
