Life Is Surfing
Wisdoms from the shore
After moving to Santa Cruz I started watching surfers. I’m not a surfer. I own a wetsuit because, well, I live by the beach and the water is wicked cold. And over the years various friends have charitably taken me out to catch waves, but it’s not fun for me. Still, I have surfer pals, and after enough sitting with them, I think what they do and what I do are almost exactly the same. If you ever want to ask me for my wisdom on life, I’d say it’s like surfing. So here goes:
The world is full of energy which moves in waves. Of various wavelengths. You can’t see them, but you can feel them. It’s like the ocean. The water itself isn’t moving much, except sloshing around near the edges, but you can see the energy waves moving through that fluid. It’s hypnotic.
Surfers jump in the water and paddle out. Out to where? Out to where they can catch a wave. So they sit around a lot and watch the horizon, watch the shifting energies, constantly judging what is worth their time and adjusting their position. It takes patience, and an eye for feeling what’s moving around. They know the rhythms, the waves come in sets, and then stop, and then return. The surfers move themselves around to improve their odds to catch something they can handle.
And soon they identify their target wave, in the distance, moving toward them…
