The way you surf today is certainly different from the way you rode waves last year, or the year before. Photo: Jeremy Bishop//Unsplash
“Rebirth” is a term slapped on everything from political candidates to athletes to sketchy IG accounts promising that your lackluster life will change if you only drink this magic [fill in the blank] elixir.
Technically, rebirth refers to the process of being born again, reincarnated, or reappearing and beginning to improve after a tough go. While I doubt that X brand of mushroom coffee is going to change anyone’s life, the term has was atop my mind when my Boston Celtics came back to win the championship earlier this summer after a complete debacle of a game four.
Surfing, too, offers us the chance to begin again, whether we like it or not, because the ocean is known to forcefully pull us back to stage one. The question is: when the waves toss us back to ground zero, do we surface reborn, with a new perspective?
Surfing changed for me when I moved from New England to California three years ago. While some friends said I’d have an instant breakthrough with waves available every day, my first act was a slog rippled with injuries. But I got into better shape, tried to soak in all available knowledge, and put the time in. My surfing changed, my love for it intensified, and my perspective on riding waves became forever altered.
Back in New England for a few months, I checked the report and was greeted by knee-high peelers, which wasn’t too shabby for June — especially when it’s hot and your summer is stacked with home repairs and seeing friends and family. I grabbed a nine-footer I hadn’t ridden in years and drove down the coast, ruminating on time and change. As kids, a friend and I taught ourselves at the break where I was headed, hooting into the dusk when we finally caught one. Back then, we called the surf shop for the report and typically only a handful of surfers made the trek unless it was firing. Now there’s a surf cam, a surf shop and a constant line of cars circling. Plus, I’ve lost touch with that old surf buddy of mine, though it’d be easy to call him up. It’s been years, I thought, what’s the point of getting in touch now?
I paddled out, smiling as I drifted through clumps of seaweed, sun hot on my back. The lineup was mostly earnest beginners with a few savvy loggers mixed in, all waiting for something rideable amid the mush. Surfing, I thought stoically, is not something I even think about anymore. I just do it, like drinking a cup of coffee or breathing.
As I paddled back and forth, I began to realize I was lining up with my time-rested marks on the shore but not scoring. When was the last time I surfed here? Two summers ago? Three? Had the storms rearranged the coast? While others stretched out on long, gentle rides, I sat there, sinking. Suddenly I wasn’t the same surfer who left the West Coast full of confidence, sure-footed carves, and explosive bottom turns. I was just a guy nobody knew floating through a lonely low tide on a cumbersome board that didn’t feel like mine. Had I traded local knowledge and experience in one place for another? Was it impossible to be a local at two spots at once?
Instead of smiling and appreciating the good vibe and the relaxation of a sunny beach day, I grew annoyed and paddled harder into the flattening swells, my smile disappearing as I missed waves. Missed waves? All I wanted to do was get a few fun rides; normally pretty effortless. But like a team that already believes they’ve won the thing, the second we start thinking that something has become automatic, that we don’t have to try so hard, it’s the beginning of the end.
The worse the conditions grew, the more I got in my head. I got sunburned. I rode a few sheepish waves, my cross-stepping resembling bad line dancing. I paddled in circles. After riding a fish or a mid-length for eight months, my longboard felt entirely devoid of sweet spots. Adding insult to injury, I tried to grab one last wave in and somehow, the weakest wave I’d been on in years somehow flipped me over and slammed my ass against the shallow rocks.
Driving home, my normal post-surf glow went dark. The cuts on my feet stung from the rocks I used to nimbly avoid. Had there been a time warp? Had I lost all athletic ability? Or was surfing trying to tell me something? Claire Salinda, writer and surfer from Los Angeles, suggests in the L.A. Times that, “Every time a surfer breaks a board, every time a surfer is forced to hold their breath longer than they thought possible, and yes, even every time a surfer pearls on a puny wave, they experience a kind of death. And yet, we’re all just trying to go surfing again. It’s as if the baptismal in the ocean were somehow both the original sin and its curative.”
Salinda’s poetic framing may sound hyperbolic, but if we’re doing it correctly, we shouldn’t stay the same surfer for too long. We strive to improve our surfing as often as we’re forced to restore our boards, but we often plateau and hit our heads against the waves for a few days. Hell, sometimes we even feel like we are sliding backwards. Then when we least expect it, we’re reincarnated as a different surfer. But to do so, we must be open to both failure and change.
Surfing is all about negotiating and learning from change, as is life. Now for the understatement of the year: change is difficult. My fiancé and I are constantly on the move these days, our lives in constant upheaval. Sometimes it feels like as soon as we get settled, we take off again. Leaving the people and places we love is hard, but just like waves, near-perfect moments occur when we least expect it, whether it’s screaming at a basketball game with my family, stopping in a random town on one of our cross-country drives for a cold beer, or dropping into a barreling wave at sunset.
In the bigger picture, many have relied on both the challenge and healing motion of the sea for relief from PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction and more. There are numerous surfing clubs and associations formed to help people with their disabilities, and surfing is scientifically shown to be therapeutic and to help people reinvigorate and reinvent themselves in surprising ways thanks to the ocean’s restorative power.
The message of the sea isn’t always crystal clear, but if you look closely enough, you’ll see that surfing pulls us down beneath the swirling surface to show us new things about ourselves, we just have to remain open to them. In this case, the message was about not taking anything for granted. It was about remembering the innocence and joy I brought to that same beach years ago, and not letting the crowds, the development, the wave size, my expectations, or anything else tarnish it. The next time a summer swell appears, I’ll paddle out with a new perspective, and maybe I’ll call my old surf bud on the drive and see if he wants to join me.
