An Ode to Simply Waiting on Waves

Sports Uncategorized
An Ode to Simply Waiting on Waves
Because it’s always worth the wait. Photo: Jarno Colijn//Unsplash

The Inertia

“If you added up the seconds that a good surfer actually spent riding the waves, it would amount to only the smallest fraction of an entire life.”

-Ellis Avery, “The Surfer’s Secret to Happiness,” The New York Times, 8/10/19

We sit there, a stranger and I, waiting on a wave.

My concerns about work, money, writing, life, all fade as I scan the horizon for a corner, a curl, an angle, a bump. A ripple.

I see nothing. Nada.

My mind begins to wander.

I let it take off.

No one tells you when you’re young that much of your adult life will be spent waiting. Waiting on a work email, waiting until the work day ends, waiting for the summer, the fall. Waiting on winter swells, the holidays, some good news. Waiting in line at the post office, the bank, waiting for the shaper to finish your board, waiting for the next storm to hit and stir up some swell. Waiting for the world to end, if you believe the latest news flash. Or, just waiting for the sun to rise one more time.

Yet when we’re on dry land doing all this waiting, we don’t allow ourselves to drift. We tolerate no mental meandering. Lost, we cling to our phones like compasses and gobble fat spoonfuls of news, meaningless media updates, AI videos, and the newest Tik Tok trend: watch me make rainbow-colored pretzels in five easy steps!

Our brains spin ceaselessly, hungrily devouring constant stimulation.

That is, until we paddle out.

Surfing offers us one of the last vestiges of hope: complete and voluntary emptiness. There’s nothing out there but the crash of the waves behind us and the sublime beauty of the horizon before us.

Surfing is also predicated on a specific type of waiting. Sitting there, summoning virgin waves from the chop, we’re forced to linger. As Avery writes, “Watching the surfers, I noticed that the time they spent standing on their boards, riding waves…was minimal compared with the time they spent bobbing around in the water next to the board, generally going nowhere. Even the really good surfers spend far more time off the board than on it.”

Yet there is a sense of slow-paced beauty in biding our time. There is wisdom in waiting.

Part of the waiting in surfing consists of watching, sensing, listening, predicting. Paddling back and forth and skirting the crowd to find the spot that will suddenly transform into movement and speed and momentum.

Constantly making minute adjustments is part of our natural behavior as surfers, part of our adaptation to the ever-changing world of the sea. We’re also, though, assuming our inner Jack Johnson, and sitting, waiting, wishing. We’re inherently focused, yet also: simply hovering.

At times, our brains exhale and do absolutely nothing. We exist within the wind, the spray and the sky, and it is more than enough. Other times, our minds whir forwards or backwards in time, neurons flying down the face without us, solving problems and finding answers wedged far away from our conscious minds. Daydreaming is a lost art these days, and a darkly mysterious force as well. I often finish a surf and, on the walk home, realize that my brain has covertly finished the song or sentence that I was stuck on for hours before.

Until, of course, the magical moment arrives. The few seconds that test our readiness and toughness, our equilibrium. The instant that transforms desire into action. Do our minds still spin as we paddle, drop, dig in fins and rocket upward — or do our psyches sail on into the void? Perhaps that’s a question for another time.

Whenever we are faced with empty minutes these days — we’re in line for a coffee, or waiting on a flight — we plug ourselves in. We seek out distraction to avoid thinking or dreaming or just staring up at the endless blue sky.

Surfing, though, forces us to go quiet. To pull the cord. That is why we get out of the water and feel refreshed, ready for anything. Reborn. So, to the late, great Tom Petty: maybe the waiting isn’t the hardest part, man — it’s the best part.