I’d take this view over looking at my iPhone any day. Photo: GoPro / Koa Smith
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the relative importance of surfing to my life. I’m sure this is something many of you can identify with. It’s often like an inner grappling match – surfing vs morality. I don’t think morality is too strong a word either, because I’ve definitely chosen to surf in lieu of things that I needed to do, and perhaps even things that I felt it would be morally wrong not to do. Yet surfing nearly always wins. It’s got my morals in a choke hold. Recently, however, the battle has reached an impasse, and I’ve found that surfing has become easier to justify than ever before. My connection to surfing is the only time I can fully disconnect from the screens that seem to rule our lives, and I think it is vital that we do that.
Technology is undoubtedly what will define us as a generation, but it’s as exhausting as it is innovative. As our lives become dominated by screen time it has never been more important to break the digital shackles and get in the water. Screens have made time an irrelevance; behind the screen of your smartphone traditional time zones are obsolete whereas streams of data never stop. How many of you habitually check your phone first thing in the morning, or last thing at night? Even worse – how many of you find yourselves checking them in the middle of the night, probably due to bouts of screen-induced insomnia?
Luckily, when I surf I truly get away. Due to the minor inconvenience of Scotland’s glaciation, for me surfing inevitably involves a lot of driving, and there are few places that are worth going just for day trips. There is no data signal in most of the places I go, and this is part of the appeal. My iPhone becomes useless and it’s incredibly liberating. It’s like reclaiming my life before I was forced to check my screen every few minutes. All of a sudden there seems to be light at the end of the rabbit hole.
Surfing forces me to slow my life down. It allows me to disconnect from the spiral of “things to do” which spin round my calendar and my Evernote at varying rates, but never quite seem to slow to a speed that might allow me to comfortably step off. Being away on a surf trip forces this spiral to a halt, and it’s a stoppage that I desperately need.
It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m just cruising when I surf, and it doesn’t mean I’m just daydreaming on the shoulder either. The immersive experience of surfing and the variables of winds, tides, swells, board choice, spot choice – not to mention the nuances of technique and style – demand my focus, and that extended concentration on just one task often feels like a process of regeneration.
I only need to think about my reading habits as an example of how our digital dependence has changed us. I used to be a vociferous reader, but now I struggle to find the time, or more accurately the quiet headspace. I constantly feel like I am surrounded by a litter of screens, all shouting information at me and demanding my attention. Immersing myself in deep reading is what I grew up with but now seems lost to a digital world where I am constantly made to feel like I am missing something. Where once I traversed the pages with style and flow, connecting perfectly with the critical sections; now I am dragging my take offs, bogging the turns, and failing to be held in the pocket of the verse.
Sometimes I just need to hit pause, and I seem only able to do that when I surf. Surfing re-teaches me the value of focus, reflection, and raising my eyes to the world around me. Have you heard the tale of the man who almost bumped into a bear because he was too busy looking at his smartphone? If that’s not a metaphor for why our generation need to lift our heads now and again then I don’t know what is!
We need to realize that sometimes doing less helps us to get more. I know that surfing can be a narcissistic bubble of self, but it’s good to have space. For me, surfing is a place I feel simultaneously switched on to the real world and off from the digital world. And I feel like I have a greater need for that every single day.
