The Courage to Take Off

The other day I went surfing after six days out of the water. When I got to Trestles, the surf spot in San Clemente where I’ve been spending most of my time, it was bigger than I’d seen it in the past and different.  The waves were faster, the drops were steeper and the surfers of a different caliber.  But it wasn’t that much bigger and I’d surfed waves bigger than this while I’d been in Costa Rica.

Within minutes of paddling out, something happened. I was paralyzed by fear. Every time I would attempt to take off on a wave I would pull back and think “I’m gonna eat shit, if I try to go down that.” I was overcome by these knots in my stomach and I couldn’t understand why I could not get myself to take off.  To make matters worse, there were kids taking off on every wave having the time of their lives.

In close to two and a half hours, I found it in myself to take off on one wave. This is fine when the surf is shit, but when it’s good, there’s no way that’s acceptable. I thought about the story I’d be sharing with my friends about how “I drove an hour to get there, the waves were awesome and all I caught was one damn wave.”   On the ones I did actually commit to, there wasn’t enough push to get me on to the wave and I muttered some four letter expletives.

In the final hour, another surfer showed up and as I attempted to take off my next wave he yelled “go…” or something along those lines. My theory that all it takes is one good wave proved to be true as always. It wiped out the fact that the earlier part of the session had been complete crap. From that point forward I caught about 5 more waves and finished it off on a high note.

As always I started to see parallels between surfing and life.  To do anything worthwhile in life , you have to muster up the courage to take off. If you want to catch a wave you have to just commit and go. It’s possible you will eat shit. But as one of my friends once told me “it’s just water.”  So, I’ll tell you, it’s just life.

Timing and Positioning

I hate teaching people how to surf, unless they are single, female and attractive. To add to that I’m not that great a teacher. I’m just being honest.  But every now and then I’ll have a friend ask if they can come with me and while I have succeeded in getting them to stand up, the one thing I can’t teach them how to do is read waves.

If you don’t surf, you look at the ocean and see blue, calm, and peace. I look at it and I see wave shape, wave size, tides, wind conditions and every other detail that makes you feel as though being a surfer is like being an amateur meteorologist.

Once you muster up the courage to take off, you have to learn to read waves. That’s all about timing and positioning. You have to learn to be in the right place at the right time and once you can do that you’ll understand how a hobby turns from an outlet into an obsession. 

People who catch the best waves in the game of life are masters of timing and positioning. But the only way they learn that is from experience. They take a few on the head before they start to understand this instinctively.

A few years back I met this girl who I thought I might end up dating. I remember talking to her about how odd it was that we had never met in college. But I also told her she would have hated me because I was really different. Her reply: “timing is everything.”

Whatever wave it is you’re mustering up the courage to take off on, timing will a play role in whether it’s the ride of your life, or you eat shit hard. So once you find the courage to take off on a regular basis, start learning to time it perfectly and you’ll be stoked for life.