Why You Love Surfing

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Can you truly describe the wave riding experience? Writers are paid (often not very well) to arrange words – which represent things – in clever ways, so they evoke feelings of empathy in the mind of the reader. The words represent symbols and actions, but feelings are wherein the power lies. Wars are not initiated without feelings. Neither is change.

What is it that makes you want to go surfing? Is it your heart, or gut, or anticipatory endorphin rush? No.  It is, in fact, your limbic system. This is the paleomammalian centre that sits deep within your head, responsible for your feelings. The limbic brain does not process or recognise language. It is purely instinctive. A system refined over aeons into a highly complex processing unit which responds to and controls our deepest needs, motivations and emotions.

Imagine the sensation of gliding along a wall of water. The kaleidoscope of motion that provides feelings of excitement and ease (the opposite of dis-ease, which is a symptom of negative emotional states). The rush of competition for a resource in a wilderness man and woman are yet to control.  If you’ve ever traipsed down a beach with a semi-gun as the ocean shakes the sand beneath your feet then you’ll know what it feels like to be a warrior. Scanning the horizon for a break in lines, finding the right rock to jump off. In a world gone soft, surfers connect with their bodies and the environment in ways that most humans will never experience. It is raw. The sun scathes us, the salt dries our membranes, creatures sting and stalk us. before dropping down and for a few fleeting moments we’re at one with a wave of energy. Gliding free. Expressing something from deep within our limbic systems: aggression, flow, joy.

Ever see the smile on a new surfer’s face as they ride one through to the foam? Imagine the look on your own as you touch that source. That base layer inside of you that vibrates like the strum of a guitar in tune. The feeling of what happens. You’ll touch these moments throughout your life. Some call it flow. Some call it bliss.

Surfers call it stoke.

And if you ask me, I think what drives it is a desire for connection. Connection with something greater than ourselves. Nothing in our world is greater than the ocean. When you ride a wave you’re not connecting only with a wall of water. You’re connecting with the whole thing. From the beginning of time. The birth of life, a singular passage of creation and death, diversity and chaos that links you with every respiring, heart-beating bundle of neurons since the beginning.

And in the beginning there was motion. Wave-like. Never ending. A connection to everything before and everything after (for a beginning is arbitrary in a system of relativity).

Therefore, it’s no surprise, really, that when you find yourself sliding along a physical manifestation of the universe  –  one that stimulates all of your senses –  you feel the love.