What have I lost from years of surfing?

A journey to see the core of how I move about my daily life.

Katsushika Hokusai - 1831

In the famous Japanese Hokusai’s picture The Great Wave off Kanagawa, three boats move with the sea, blending their bodies on the spiraling waves. It is a typical depiction of how humans establish their position among the sea: The natural force is too great. We are only little wooden fragments in the tossing power.

I have been surfing for five years. Sometimes a strange thought sparked in my head, that the way we look at nature with hostile attitude has turned us away from them.

*

I sacrificed most of my comfort in modern life to go surf, to be with the waves. I stay in a camper car for half a year with no access to a hot shower, running water, or private bathroom so that I can move and stay near the sea and surf every day. I committed to a sport I didn't know six years ago. It is not the game. It is the generous nature that persuaded me.

Surfing is simple (among its complicated physics aspects): you paddle out with a board, sit on it, wait for a wave and take it in.

The game forces me to stay in the water for 3-5 hours daily. Each beach is different. There are rip currents. Waves are mean. Some areas are mellow. A rock forms the wave perfect for a take-off. I have to be aware of little factors of nature that I normally would ignore.

I look through the sand when I walk out of the beach to spot underlying movement. Some places have stingrays; shuffling the feet startles them, and they quietly move away. If I step from above on their back, they will launch their bone spear at my feet. It is excruciating. The injury bleeds, and the poison from their spears will spread, causing unbearable pain in the foot.

I lie down on the board and look deeply into the transparent layers of water. Under the emerald glassy water could be a giant rock. It stays subtly until the water recedes. My body would land directly on the razor-sharp surface. I surf new beaches almost every month, which requires me to observe in detail the rock area, rock position, and rock surface characteristics to avoid accidents and befriend the landscape.

Once, in Punta de Mita (Mexico), on Stinky Beach, a local girl stayed beside a giant rock and picked the steepest wave for the ride. She knew the rock's location by looking at the water ripples and the odd swirl on the surface. Most people avoided anywhere near her. Hitting the rock would break their fragile boards.

I went out on a small wave day, searching and looking for the spot she used to stay. It was four hours of failing blind guesses. Exhausted, I sat on the board and watched the water move. Water slightly curled up, and then receded subtly. The sun glared and reflected, making the water shadow almost flat in the eyes. I squinted and carefully measured its slight rise every time waves came in. I stepped down from the board and touched my feet on the rock. I felt the height of the water and walked blindly until I tumbled on the large rock. There it was. The wave-picking rock.

*

Surfing releases me into an isolated state of mind. I sit far from the shore, looking at the slit of the horizon. The quietness is like nothing else. The water is noisy. Dolphins jump. Wind blows. But it is quiet. My mind doesn't accelerate in its craze of thought. There is no mind holder for my imagination to swing, clutch on, or spit out oddly chaotic life scenarios. The space I inhabit is just quiet and simple. It is the resting time that the ocean presents to me every time I step into their realm.

What does awareness mean in surfing? - It is the perspective when I look at the wave force. From afar, the wave slides with some angles. It rises high or lumbers. It curves a sharp edge and hammers or slowly crashes like a thick liquid pour. How far does it rise and crash? How deep does it carve and dwell? These questions require constant observation.

I was waiting for a wave on a San Diego beach and suddenly thought of a deadline I hadn't finished. In a blink, I was overturned and grinded several rolls into the wave jaws. There was no chance for distraction. I was punished for my ill-focused mind. The interaction was physical, leaving a strong remark in my consciousness that I stop thinking of anything else when surfing. In a three or four-hour session, I was trained to solely think of which way to move and where to aim when swimming toward the waves.

*

One occasion, I was smashed by many waves and missed every wave on a beach in Baja California. I couldn't read the beach well enough. An old man swam toward me and asked me to paddle out further because the seabed at my spot was shallowed with a sand bed. It caused the waves to rise and crash drastically. I followed him out, where waves got mellow and enjoyable.

Waves activities remind me of perspectives in life. I used to fixate on an idea or a point of view. I was told to be too inflexible and stubborn. If I was obstinate, I just sat at the spot to be smashed and destroyed by the waves until the end. Listening to the old man's advice gave me a second chance to have better time and practice. My perspective has grown versatile over the years since I surfed. I stop believing that I hold the high ground of truth.

I relax my jaws to accept criticism, which in turn has helped me do things better. My heartbeat doesn't increase when I hear different options from my choices. My body feels like it can bend and straighten up quickly, adjusts, and accepts differences like seeing waves come and go. I don't hold on to my ultimate truth (which can be twisted as fast as how life changes) and get stuck in its spiral loop. Possibilities of thought are more intricate and exciting than the sure dullness.

In The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the waves churn up and layers with spiraling force. The foam was depicted as multiple thorny claws reading to collapse on the fragile wooden boats below. In the same series, the artist sometimes portrayed the waves as unformed monstrous beings with stretchy bodies and sharp grips. Is it the way we humans perceive the ocean? A mystical monstrous force? A shifty and sketchy character? What I could grasp from the picture is a defensive and unsafe feeling. What have we done to make the ocean an unfriendly force?

*

Being near the sea brought me chances to see nature and connections differently. I was walking on a beach in Panama after a small storm. I saw a credit card. It was issued by a bank in Germany, with a German name on it, yet it somehow ended up on the shore in Central America. The profound impacts each human being causing to nature startled me.

I then saw more of this devastating reality in play. A turtle got stuck a hand on the fishing net. A bird, tangled by the fishing line, or for whatever reason, dead and dried by the sea, transparent plastic lines tangled on its claws. A sea of no fish, a water desert.

A child in an Indonesian village picked up a Chanel lipstick tube swept into their remote beach. The kid didn't know that the price of such lipstick could be as much as his family's two months' income. The people in his remote village did not own that black cover tube, yet they suffered tonnes of garbage like that swept onto their shores.

However, instead of interrogating the child and his family about "why your beach is full of garbage" and putting them through the moral shame game (you are more ashamed than I do), I gradually understood that as a breathing human being, I am connected to this child, his beach, the Chanel lipstick tube, the swept-in credit card. My modern and convenient life puts these people from remote places under the global pressure of plastic and climate change. The kid and his Indonesian family didn't do anything as drastic to nature, yet they are at the frontline of climate upheaval. They suffer first when the sea turns into a water desert. They first taste the plastic garbage choking their river mouths. They live in the same living landscape as I do, and I must be held accountable for my daily consumption.

Surfing doesn't turn me into a moral hypocrite of the environment, going around to judge everyone on their plastic consumption. The ocean offers broad suggestions for a lighter and more responsible existence. I do not get "climate fatigue" and buy things tirelessly on Amazon. I don't become cynical about how humans walk the path among whatever is left under their feet. I don't feel gloomy about climate change or we are doomed. I treasure this daily existence. I have been stirred by the ocean breeze and challenged by rising waves.

*

I respect how life is moving and what might be the consequences that humans have to pay for their sumptuous spending on the shoulder of nature's suffering. A whale rises quietly from the depth so far away into the glassy rosy water at sunset. This watching act manifests my bond with nature I have never understood enough. A school of blue and yellow fish dart through the coral reefs. Their dashing movements fall into my eyes, blurred in water, and stay for many days, exhilarating and persuasive that lives are around me, seconds to seconds.

I have a hard time buying into the doomsday or climate dystopia. Ocean has compelled me that they could recover, and they keep their promise of the honest abundance. A year of fishing prohibition gives time for an immense area to give birth and recall all the creatures to return "home." A year of keeping the beach from the conquer of hotels and resorts fosters the shore back to life with turtle eggs, shore birds, and a variety of fish.

I have been offered loose perspectives like I am looking at the light through the ocean water and coral color kaleidoscope. I stop running with tunnel vision like a fighting horse. There is no need to "fight" when imagining and living. I appreciate moments of change, loosely defined ideas, and unformed thought. I can sit on my board and see a gentle wave pass, knowing it will crash somewhere behind my back with full force. This knowledge of point of view and distant observation assures me.

I take a deep breath. I am curled up and overturned. I am smashed. I rise up. I accept the next wave.

The fear and anxiety dissolve into my bloodstream, quietly satisfying and understandable.