Everything…It’s All Fuckin’ Waves Dude!

There was an ideal light offshore wind today helping mold some beautiful waves to ride.

I had no clue when I moved to Florida how much, something as simple as wind direction, could affect the quality and shape of the surf. I learned that little nugget of wind wisdom talking to a local surfer one day. A mild offshore wind, one that blows out to sea against the incoming waves, holds the waves back a bit and keeps them from breaking down early, into unrideable foamy white water. The wind coming onshore is a swell killer, creating unorganized choppy surf.

No wind actually creates the quintessential wave, but doesn't happen much from my experience.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in early May. I had just arrived on North Vilano beach with my 8’11” longboard, taking a small breather after hauling my new Craigslist bargain beauty up 35 steps, over the A1A Scenic highway on the pedestrian overpass, then back down 35 stairs to the beach. I had my board lying next to me, fins down in the warm sand while I rubbed some new blue label, Mr. Zogs, extra hard Sex Wax on my board.

Surfers as a group are a laid back, low stress, accept life as it presents itself sort. Some say it stems from all of the magnesium they swallow from the ocean, some say it is from a specific herb inhaled before and after surfing, some say it is because they don’t have the stress of spending countless hours in the public school system like other kids their age, and still others link it to their daily active lifestyle (an overweight surfer would look like a prime rib roast at a vegan buffet).

I know of no studies conducted on surfers, but I can personally report that I’ve never met a one without a smile on their face, in fact, every surfer I’ve ever met has exuded sincere happiness with an eagerness to talk and friendly to the extreme. They almost seem confused by sadness, quick to cheer you up and say something like, “no worries, just head out in the ocean and you will be good as new in no time.” From their point of view, a few 15 second rides could cure the entire world of any depression.

Most share a reverence of nature, especially for the ocean. And some have a deep-seated spirituality from experience working with the creator’s creation.

On this particular day, I had just strapped up the Velcro leash around my ankle and was sitting next to my board, taking some time to see where the best waves seemed to be breaking and which direction the current was pulling. As I watched the surfers catch a few waves, one long haired, blonde, archetypal male surfer rode his last wave of the day into the shore, picked up his board, did a quick hair flip to put it back where it belonged and walked right up and sat down next to me.

He stared out at the scene for a few seconds, then, without turning toward me said, “fuckin’ great waves today dude.”

I turned to him, smiled, and responded, “yeah, glad I decided to come down today.”

“Dude, I make that decision every day, even when there’s no waves, just good for the soul to be where the ocean meets the sand. All the answers in life exist right here dude!”

I pondered his statement for a moment. My instinct was just to concur with him, even though I wasn’t sure I understood if he was talking metaphorically or literally. I wasn’t in a hurry to get in the water just yet and he seemed like he wasn’t in a rush to do anything, at all. So instead of acting like I knew what he meant, thus learning nothing, I glanced over at him and asked, “what do you mean that all the answers to life exist right here?”
Again, without turning to me, his gaze fixated on the sea, he said, “Waves dude, life, love, loneliness, laughter, it’s all waves?”

“Any word that starts with L is a wave?” I asked with a playful sarcasm.

He gave a sincere but small laugh, then continued with a slow, calm and passionate tone, “no dude, not just the L words, the E word too…Everything is a wave. Everything we experience and go through in life is a wave. If my mom and dad would have realized that Love was a wave, they would have never got divorced. If people realized that all their experiences, the good times and the shit, were just waves, they wouldn’t fuckin’ freak out so much when they lose a job or someone close to them dies. They’d just use that downward momentum to nail the bottom turn when they hit the trough and ride it back up.”

As I listened to his words, I realized he was sharing something with me that he had thought deeply about and I sensed a little pain in his voice when he mentioned his parent’s divorce and people freakin’ out.

I didn’t say anything, just looked at him as he gazed out at the ocean. Then he turned from the ocean and made eye contact, spun on his ass, faced directly at me and continued with his thought. He had a big smile, and was completely present as he continued. “Dude, think about it, the grand builder of all this gave us all the answers to life right here. If you see the world as it is, a wave, it’s perfect.”

He pointed out at the surf, “see, people think a wave is made of two parts, a crest and a trough. But it isn’t true, it’s a totally fucked up perspective, the wave is the crest and the trough. They don’t exist independent of the other. You can’t have a wave with just a crest, it is impossible. A crest without a trough would just be flat water. The exist only as one dude. Like it’s impossible to have a front without a back. And here is the key dude,” he paused for emphasis and spoke even slower, “surfing allowed me to be taught by the grand builder that the trough is a fucking blessing, not just the crest, right dude! Not only that, we surf the troughs and love them, we surf the crests and love them, but most times we are in-between the crest and trough, cruisin, just loving the in-between dude, I mean, wow, the in-between, that is where we live, right!”

He paused to breathe deeply twice. It provided me time to realize how much I was taken in by his passion.

Then he continued, “that’s life and Dad and Mom just didn’t get it. Nobody does. See everyone thinks that Love is the crests and the trough is the loss of love. But Love is the whole fuckin’ wave dude. Love doesn’t exist only with crests, that would be flat, boring as shit water…you can’t surf that. The unpredictability and momentum of the wave, of Love is what makes it fuckin’ awesome. Love is the fuckin’ low section of the wave and the crest and about the long orgasmic moments we spend in-between, right dude.

Using hand gestures now, “Think about it, when we catch a fuckin’ wave we shoot immediately from the crest to the trough and then pull a bottom turn up to the middle, that is when you know it’s love right, when you go from first kiss to first fight and then make it to the middle without wiping out. Whoa, I mean, mind blown, right! My parents didn’t see the fuckin’ whole wave dude. Every time they went into a trough, they thought they were falling out of love. They saw the middle as a boring, shitty rut. Un-fucking-believable right dude, the middle is part of the wave, it’s a great part of love, just carvin forever if we could, right. Pretty soon, they just pulled out of the wave, said this sucks, were fuckin’ done. Bam! Just like that they were off trying to find some fuckin’ unicorn, a fuckin’ wave with just crests, that fuckin’ doesn’t exist dude! It’s all right there dude, all the answers.”

He had me. I felt as I had evolved from caterpillar to butterfly in an instant. I wanted to add to the conversation, insights were flowing through my brain, I thought he might be right, that Everything we experience is just a wave and we don’t realize the bad comes with the good. That there is no light without darkness. I had been taught growing up that I needed to eschew any darkness in me and embrace only the light. More recently, I was coming to realize that darkness must be embraced. That darkness does most of the teaching and actually allows light to exist. For more light to expand within me I need the darkness.

“Dude,” For some reason, starting my sentence that way actually felt like I was coming UP to his level, rather than down. “You are so right. The bad times are part of the experience, not separate from the good times, and we should embrace them, learn from them.” I paused and tried to gather my thoughts a bit, then just kind of blurted out, “I think people spend too much time down in the trough.”

He looked directly in my eyes, put his hand on my shoulder as if I had just been accepted into his circle of trust. “Dude, exactly, totally too much time in the trough, and of course, what happens, Bam, the wave catches you and eats you up, massive wipe out, you’re suckin in water, coughin, going through the cement mixer, thinkin’ your gonna die, praying for air, promising God you won’t smoke weed as much, ya know. It’s like, dude, don’t spend so much damn time down there in the trough dude, use it, use the trough to bottom turn back up into the middle, and fuckin’ barrel life, right!”

He stood up, wiped the sand off his shorts, reached down, grabbed his board and with a quick hair flip, he was on his way. I stood up, and he grabbed my hand pulled me in for a chest bump and said, “life is the whole wave, not just the top. Every answer is right there dude, the builder put it all right there for us if we will just see it, that’s why we come here, right!”

“That’s right dude, exactly!”

And just like that, he walked away with a smile on his face, sand in his hair and a board tucked up against his side without a care in the world.

I sat back down, still leashed up to my board and spent a little more time with my thoughts.

When you see a wave, it is actually a picture of Love, Life, Laughter and Loneliness, well…Everything.

Sometimes the wavelength is longer and we think we will never get out of the trough, but there can’t be a trough without a crest. They can’t exist separately. This existence isn’t life then death, it is a life-death-life cycle, a continuous wave.

I thought about how the Quantum physics perspective has taken the place of the Newtonian physics view of the universe. As we have moved from matter making up the universe to energy waves as the basic components. As we have hurled atoms at each other in giant supercolliders and broken them into smaller and smaller pieces, we have found that atoms are made of waves of energy. So my surfer buddy, who’s name I didn’t even catch, was taught the truths of the universe and quantum physics right on this beach…Everything is a wave.

All the answers may just be right here, I thought, as I picked up my board and walked into the water.