by Eric Schenck
I’ve been surfing for about three years.
Not enough to be a guide of any sort, but certainly enough to realize what a miracle the sport really is.
What follows are nine life lessons surfing has taught me. The more you do anything, the more you realize it can teach you about everything.
1) As long as you start, you’re doing ok
I built a surfboard with my dad when I was 18. In my American high school, you needed a “senior project” in order to graduate.
I’d always wanted to surf, and my dad is a carpenter who can make just about anything. It was a match made in heaven.
When we finally finished putting the orange paint on and it dried out, I officially had a surfboard. I was going to start right away. A new “surfing bro” identity was just around the corner, and the world seemed full of possibility.
It took 10 more years before I went surfing for the first time. I still haven’t even taken my senior project out for a spin.
But I’m here now, and I’m surfing a lot, and I’m about twice as good as I was last year.
Things don’t need to be perfect before you can invite a little more joy into your life.
I started a decade later than I planned – but I started.
And that’s what matters.
2) Doing something is always different than planning for it
I wish surfing was easy. Or at least one of those things that you can learn from watching a bunch of videos.
But you can’t.
Before my first time out, I spent a few hours on YouTube. Learning how to paddle, studying the drop in, watching videos of the surfing greats.
It didn’t help a bit.
That first day, the ocean forced me into the gap between planning and practice.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that an ounce of action is worth a ton of theory, and I learned that the hard way.
As frustrating as that can be, I think it’s also beautiful. It’s life’s way of forcing our hand. We all want to do stuff and become things. That’s the easy part.
That ounce of action?
Not so much.
Is it hard? Yes. But is it worth it?
Absolutely.
3) You’re 20 hours of focused work away from being better than 99% of people
I read this once on Twitter. I discarded it as “tech bro” buzz talk. But it’s true.
Pick anything you’re interested in and give it your focused attention. After about 20 hours, you’ll be better at it than just about everybody.
Understand this, and it quickly becomes a kind of miracle.
When I first took a board out, I sucked. I expected all those videos to help. But they didn’t. I looked like the beginner that I was. Watching better surfers rip down the face of breaking waves, I stuck to the white wash.
But I got better.
I kept going out and kept falling over. But wouldn’t you know it, after about 20 hours, something clicked. I could stand up, and I started to get the feel for a board underneath my feet. Waves stopped being confusing, and became an energy to attach myself to.
Since then, it’s only been up.
We’re all afraid to start. We’re all afraid of looking stupid. But that feeling of “I have no idea what I’m doing” passes pretty quickly. It’s replaced with, if not competence, a general idea of how things go.
After that hurdle, it’s off to the races.
Are you trying to be world-class? That will take a bit more work.
But if you’re just trying to get good (and have fun) at something?
We’ve all got 20 hours.
4) It’s always about the people
Catching waves is cool. Catching waves with friends is cooler.
I’ve met a lot of people the last couple of years. Most of them are ok, but a few are exceptional.
Like Suzie, a British woman with hilarious stories about living on a beach in Morocco. Or Malcolm, a 70-year-old surfer with the enthusiasm of somebody 50 years younger. Or Martin, obsessed with bigger and better waves when I met him in Spain and now one of my best friends.
Surfing is a lot of sitting around and waiting. Inevitably, those gaps in the activity turn into brief chats on the water.
That turns into conversations on land, which turns into beers, which (if you’re lucky) turns into friendship.
There are sports where the solitary lends itself to enjoyment. When I take a run, I want to be alone.
Surfing has always felt different. I want to be surrounded by people I like while I’m doing it, and if I am, it instantly becomes more enjoyable.
My best memories of surfing have nothing to do with surfing at all.
I think a lot of things are like that.
5) Some of the best things in life you can’t plan for
Surfing, I’m told, used to be a lot less measurable.
You used whatever board you could find. Surf spots passed between groups as hushed whispers. You took an hour drive to a break, oblivious to what the conditions were going to be, and you hoped for the best.
And then Surfline happened.
These days, most surf breaks will have “beach cams” that let you see exactly what waves hundreds of miles away are doing. Swell reports let you know what conditions will be weeks in advance. The best places in the world are saturated, and surfboards, like so much else, have sucked up the latest and greatest in technology.
This has all had an undeniable effect on surfing as hobby.
And yet…
Sometimes, no matter how much you plan, no matter how much data you have, no matter who you’ve talked to ahead of time…
You are handed a little slice of the divine.
One of our last surfing sessions in Spain, Martin and I went out early. The internet the night before had told us that it was going to be flat, and our expectations were as low as the forecast.
But it wasn’t.
Very much the opposite, and as close to perfect conditions as you can get
For two hours, we had an absolute blast on decent sized waves, and then… I caught a bomb.
There’s no exact measurement behind the kind of wave that can be considered a bomb. But you know it when you see it coming. And if you’re lucky, you just might catch it.
Well – I did. For about 30 seconds it was the ride of my life…
And then I got cocky.
Which, unfortunately, brings me to my next life lesson.
6) Staying humble might just save your life
The end of that bomb I smashed myself in the face.
I exited cleanly and kicked my board out from under me in pure ecstasy. It was faster and deeper than I had ever gone on a wave. I had instantly become a pro, and realized that surfing was my calling in life.
I was experiencing that addictive but ridiculous spike in confidence you get after catching one of the biggest waves of your life.
During times like this, you feel invincible, and you forget one very important thing: your board is still attached to you. Kick it away, and it’s going to come back.
And after my bomb, that’s exactly what happened. My board snapped back and smashed me in the face.
I felt like my nose exploded. Which, I suppose, it kind of did.
I had a black eye for about a week after that. A work trip started two days after my accident, and I got to enjoy the constant stares of my coworkers.
Life can be a lot of fun – just remind yourself of your own mortality every now and then.
It pays to remember just how scary the ocean can be.
7) Pushing yourself to bigger and better isn’t always worth it
Turns out, Martin in Spain was exactly the same as Martin in Mexico.
Always interested in bigger waves, and always searching for that next bomb.
We had heard people talk about Nexpa in central Mexico. It was the promised land of surfing. Great waves, easy to get to, but not a lot of people. Fellow surfers also told us that the place had cheap local beer to top it all off.
Nexpa was all of that, and one other thing: far too big. We knew it as soon as we went out.
You see it when waves are large.
You feel it when they’re powerful.
Nexpa was both. There was a gathering of energy, a rumbling in the water, when we paddled out. Those are the kind of butterflies that are exciting when you can handle it. When you can’t, it’s like a dread that I can’t explain.
It was one of the worst feelings of my life seeing a set of four peaks in the distance, the fourth and last towering over the others. I knew I could clear the first three. I also knew, a full minute in advance, that the fourth gave me no chance.
It was going to crash right on top of me, and I had nowhere to go but down.
When it finally arrived, I got pushed under the water and held there for about 20 seconds. To anybody on dry land – not long at all.
But to me, struggling to get to air, having any breath in my lungs crunched out of me – an eternity. Of course, I eventually emerged.
Shaken but very much alive. I paddled in immediately. Thrilled, above all else, to be out of the water.
I sat on the beach and watched Martin surf.
Nothing worth sharing with friends back home, but certainly more enjoyable.
8) A day outside is a good day indeed
Blue skies, bluer water, and that feeling of breeze in your hair.
This is one of the great things about surfing: just how much time you spend outside.
Never once have I spent a day under the sky and regretted it. And I usually went to bed that night a little bit more ok with myself.
That’s a huge thing.
Surfing does that to you. You get in the water, get battered around, and paddle your heart out. You surf for a few hours, get tired beyond words, and are grateful when you finally get out.
A full hour later, all you want to do is get back in again.
Life feels easier outside. More importantly, outside is where you usually realize that it is.
Go outside and stay there awhile.
Philosophical or profound?
Not really-
But perhaps the solution to most of your problems.
9) We’re all after the same thing
We like to think we’re special.
But really, we’re not. And how freeing is that?
It doesn’t matter who I’ve met surfing. Doesn’t matter where they come from, or how old they are, or even how long they’ve been doing it.
Here’s the truth-
We are all just after that next wave. We are all, no matter what surfing means to us, chasing the same feeling.
That speed and the connection with moving water. That sound of your board cutting through a glassy slope. That moment, ten seconds before it gets there, when you realize you’re in the perfect spot for the perfect wave…and it’s yours entirely.
I suppose that’s each one of us. We’re all trying to “make it,” whatever that means in our lives.
Sure, we’re all different, in our own ways – but probably less so than you think.
Remembering that keeps you human. It keeps you kind, and during those moments when you just want to hate someone, it’s a gentle reminder that in many ways, they’re just like you.
…
It’s a funny thing, this surfing business.
It will chew you up and spit you out, and as you get better, you’ll almost certainly ask for more.
Surfing can’t truly be mastered (probably nothing can), but I suppose I’ll give it a shot anyway.
There’s a lot of waiting and bad days and scratches on your feet and people that steal your waves, but there is also something else that makes it all worth it:
That indescribable thing that happens when you sit and sit and sit, and nothing happens…only to be in the right place, at the right time, when the ocean picks you up and away you go.
At that moment, nothing else matters…
Because you’re flying.
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