From an outsider's perspective, surfing probably looks like a ludicrous enterprise.
Most of surfing isn’t spent actually surfing. Most surfers–except maybe the handful of pros out there–spend hours and hours planning, paddling, waiting, and sometimes, like me, nearly drowning. The actual surfing part only happens for a handful of seconds–in my case usually five to ten.
I’ll be honest, most of my surf sessions have been unremarkable. But, I share one thing in common with every surfer I’ve ever met, something that keeps us paddling out over and over again, even in the most dismal of swells. We all remember THAT wave…
Every surfer has one wave that stands out among the rest. It isn’t necessarily how we rode it, how many turns we pulled off, or what we looked like (let’s be honest we never look as cool as we feel; Pro tip: don’t film yourself surfing). Instead, something happens inside the mind that produces an indelible impression on the surfer and hooks us to the sport like a drug.
My Wave, with a capital W, happened when I was 12 years old.
My family would spend most summers in my mom’s home country, Panama. My brothers, my dad, and I had all gotten into surfing after watching a surf film at home in Miami a few years prior. Luckily, our summer vacation coincided with the swell season in Panama, giving us a perfect chance to hone our skills in clean, uncrowded waves. Thank god for that, because surfing in Miami was like trying to play tennis with a baseball bat. Weird analogy, but you get the point.
My uncle, who lived in Panama, had also gotten into surfing around the same time and he had just bought a brand-new board. It was a 5’10 blue tie-dye fish shape with a swallowtail and a quad fin set up. Don’t worry about the details of the board, I only mention them to emphasize that this was a core memory for me. Ask any surfer about their best wave and you’re likely to hear equally superfluous details. Anyway, when we got to the beach I was wearing camouflage quicksilver board shorts and a white rash guard.
The website that we used to check for surf forecasts had a rating system for the quality of the swell. One star usually meant, ‘yes there’s swell, but it’s probably windy, inconsistent, or weak’. Five stars usually meant, ‘why are you still standing there, grab your board and go!’ On this particular day, it was five stars. I was nervous sitting on the beach.
“Why don’t you take my board,” my uncle said, “you’ll be able to paddle out faster”.
Most kids my age rode shortboards. They were obviously smaller than longboards and were more maneuverable. Think of a typical skateboard. You can do tricks and all the cool kids use them.
Fish shapes are short but have the thickness of a longboard. This means you’re buoyant and can paddle as fast as you can on a longboard but you can ride the wave as loose and fast as you can on a shortboard.
“Sure, thanks,” I said. Grabbing the blue board while my uncle pulled his old one from the back of the car.
I spent most of the day in my comfort zone.
Surf breaks have different sections, often separated by skill level and bravery. This wave broke across the beach at an angle to the surfers’ left. Surfers would call it a left point break, though at high tide the wave would change and break both left and right. The peak, where the wave first broke, was reserved for the big dogs–the best surfers with the most guts. After all, this is the steepest part of the wave that breaks fast and hard in shallow water. Closer to the beach, you have the shoulder of the wave that is slightly less steep and breaks at a slower pace. For 12-year-old me the shoulder, furthest away from the big dogs, was my sweet spot.
I spent about an hour or so in the shoulder section floating around trying to not get in anyone’s way. But then, the tide started to fill in. A lot of the big dogs–woof, woof!--headed into the beach.
I paddled over to where my dad and uncle were, just before the main peak. I realized there were only about four or five surfers left in this section. With this buoyant board and my light prepubescent build, I figured I could catch the waves further out than anyone.
Initiate beast mode, I said to myself, or so I like to imagine. I paddled out past every remaining big dog in the lineup and waited for the next set.
The incoming tide was adding several feet to the already-huge swells. Suddenly, I saw it, like a freight train coming from the horizon. This next set could’ve been the biggest of the day.
If you’re the furthest person out, you gotta go for it. I felt my stomach drop and my nuts try to abandon ship.
Hold on boys, this is gonna be rough, I thought.
I let the first wave go, then the second. As the third wave of the set approached, I turned my board toward the peak. I was the furthest person out, in a prime position to claim this wave. I paddled even further, confident the wave would hold up. Then just before it came crashing on top of me, I dug my thighs into the bottom of the board, and with my arms, swiveled it toward the beach.
When you’re paddling for a wave you can’t see it behind you. You rely on instinct, experience, and gut feeling. I paddled and kicked and felt the wave sucking me back. Then suddenly like a rock out of a slingshot, it threw me forward.
Just before the board bottomed out and sent me flying head-first into the reef below, I popped up onto my feet.
This is when it happened.
Time slowed to a crawl. The wave in front of me became the only thing in the universe. I could hear the skimming of the board across the water like the slithering of a snake, tssssssssssssss. Fear dissipated. Suddenly there was no separation between myself and the wave. Just one fluid dance between surfer and surf. I rode the wave to the beach. Transformed, invincible, transfixed like Moses before the burning bush–unable to explain what I’d just seen, felt.
I could wax philosophical all day about the vividness of the experience and yes, it will sound phony and exaggerated. But while surfers, myself included, love to claim that this is a truly mystical experience unique to riding waves, it’s actually a well-documented and attainable experience.
Years later, I figured out that my experience on this wave is what the cool kids are calling a flow state. The Flow Research Collective, an organization that studies–you guessed it– flow, defined it as such:
Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform our best. More specifically, the term refers to those moments of total absorption, when an individual becomes so focused on what they’re doing that everything else just disappears, and all aspects of performance are significantly amplified.
Flow is kind of like the shutting off of the thinking brain, a silencing of our inner voice that complicates our actions. But, I feel the term ‘flow’ might be a shallow version of a deeper concept.
I recently came across the Taoist idea of Wu Wei, which according to the internet is Chinese for ‘doing nothing,’ but better said it’s ‘actionless action’ or ‘effortless effort’. Wu-Wei doesn’t mean doing nothing or doing less… it means acting in alignment with the natural world, so as to act effortlessly.
According to the School of Life website, the Taoists would say Wu Wei is “striving to make our behavior as spontaneous and inevitable as certain natural processes [...] like the bamboo that bends in the wind, or the plant that adjusts itself to the shape of a tree”.
To me, this is more simply defined as grace. Whether we are surfing, climbing, running, or simply living, Wu Wei or flow, is a smooth and elegant dance through time. It’s a deep focus on the present, an alignment with the rhythms of the divine.
Wu Wei is the epitome of human performance, and while it may sound lofty and intangible, it can be a way of life.
Let me expand, at the risk of wandering into the philosophical. Bear with me, here it goes…
The atoms that make up our bodies are quite literally the same tiny particles that made up stars and galaxies. What do I mean by that? I mean that we are descended from the cosmos. We are the divine morphed into human form and made to trudge through this messy and chaotic world. In my humble opinion, I believe we are meant to strive for a realignment with the divine.
When we experience flow, we experience a realignment with the divine processes of the natural world. When we glide across a wave, when we ascend a rock wall, dance across a stage, or completely lose ourselves in writing, or running, walking, or meditating, our actions become as natural and inevitable as the stars shifting across the night sky. If we concentrate hard enough, we can–if even for a brief moment–lose our bodies, and like a flower blooming from its stem, become a soul doing whatever it is it’s meant to do in this messy, chaotic world.
That sounds wonderful, so how do we actually experience Wu Wei or flow? Well, don’t look at me, I’m just sharing ideas, not solutions.
But having said that, I have experienced flow and moments of Wu Wei many times in different areas of my life. I’ve felt it while surfing, while running, while rock climbing, and even while writing this.
Lately, I’ve been focusing on meditating. We’ll see where that leads, but still, these tasks can seem daunting. Do you have to run ten miles to experience Wu Wei. Probably not. Maybe one day you’ll be able to achieve flow through extreme physical activities but in the meantime, why don’t we focus on something small, like grace?
Maybe you can’t always reach level 10 Wu Wei or feel the euphoria of riding a wave, but can you live your day-to-day gracefully? Can you navigate emotions smoothly and let go of negativity? Can you be gentle in your relationships? Can you speak softly and kindly? Can you dance a little every day? Can you make someone laugh? Can you just be pleasant like the sunrise?
Start small. That can’t be so hard right? Buy someone a coffee. Be natural, don’t overthink, and let go of the little things.
I know, easier said than done, but it’s a start.
When I rode THAT wave in Panama 15 years ago, I had no idea what Wu Wei was. I wasn’t even trying to achieve flow. But, alas, I found it. And therein lies the way. Don’t try so hard. Just be. Find a rhythm and go.
This is what surfing taught me about Wu Wei. Just as I was one with the wave, so too can I be one with everything I do in my life.