Surfing – A Metaphor of Life

Every day of surfing

The first thing you'll notice when you paddle out is the feeling of freedom. As the vast ocean stretches out before you, it's as if time stops, and all problems fade away. The feeling of diving under that first wave, that cold salty water brings a refreshing sensation as it hits your face and glides through your hair, this is only relieved by the warm bear hug from your wetsuit.

The gentle rocking of the water beneath your board instantly washes away any stresses, relaxing your body and mind; leaving you feeling light and unburdened. All that matters is the present moment – the now. The enjoyment of not even catching a wave, but just being one with the ocean.

This is mindfulness - this is pure Adelaide.

Starting off surfing

Surfing is a great activity to keep you entertained and out of mischief during summer and winter in the cold waters of South Australia.  But starting off can be challenging to most people as it requires patience and persistence to get to a level where you spend more time on the board and less time in the water.

Learning to surf is a good way to test your comfort zone (sharks, lol, what are they), testing your physical abilities, and to discover muscles you didn’t know you had.

When starting off surfing, it can be compared to riding a bike, but without training wheels, and minus the hard impact fall that creates bruises, scrapes and even broken bones…but you can be dumped and that’s not a great feeling.

Learning to surf can be fun.  You paddle, you fall, you get back on the board, you paddle, you fall, you try again. Wait that’s not right. You paddle, you get up, you have fun, and you have that on repeat. Instead of a song in your head on repeat, it’s a body feeling on repeat.

4 years into Surfing

Surfing is staring into the abyss, waiting for ‘that’ set to roll in. It’s a reflection of the world and in that space gives you time to reflect and think.  Time stretches out between waves and those spaces are meditation opportunities. The best surfers meditate on the water – the ocean is part of them.

And when those gnarly 10-foot waves hit, there is no time to worry about your problems – you just do it.

I remember a recent gnarly day. The big wall of water just appearing, creating a massive mountain, that developed into a huge cliff face. I remember looking down to where I was supposed to drop in. I was meant to being catching waves that day, but I can tell you I was defiantly not on that level yet. I was way too scared! Just being out there was an experience in itself.

I know that’s the complete opposite to how I was described surfing earlier but it’s interesting and fun to experience different swells as each day, it’s never the same. Experiencing and being annihilated by these big waves creates an appreciation on these natural forces the earth creates. You can’t control the intensity of the waves, but you learn how to adapt and enjoy the flow of each wave. All you can do is just try. To me surfing is life – you can’t control what happens, but you can control how you ride it out and how you react to being dumped by a gnarly life wave.