The Malady of Surfing

"Surfing is not a sport, it's a disease." Big Wednesday

Early on in my surfing life, my dad grew increasingly concerned that mere passion had begun to devolve to what he considered unhealthy obsession.  As obligations and responsibilities yielded to sloth and wasted time of a selfish pursuit, he implored: "It's okay to surf, to be someone who surfs...just don't be a surfer." 

"But Dad," I argued in my adolescent petulance, "I am a surfer!  It's my part of my identity; it's who I am!"

Of course, I rarely won any arguments with Dad.  In possession of (obscenely) high, innate intelligence, and educationally armed with degrees from Harvard, George Washington University, and U.N.H., not to mention having guilt and shame on his side, my resistance eroded over time in the attritional battle between us.  Oh, I still stubbornly surfed and continued to underachieve, yet I gradually learned to accept his supposition that I was only, someone who surfed, not a surfer.   

Yet I was not happy.  Depression draped over me like a heavy wet snow through the years.  Marriage. Parenthood. Career.  Failures all.  Leaving me naked and alone at mid-life, wondering just who the hell was I? What purpose I did I serve in this life?

The road back to myself has been frought with peril, injury, and much heartache.  Though some have hailed my perseverance as courageous, I liken my journey more akin with a salmon, pre-programmed to swim upstream, jumping rocks and waterfalls, defying all, even death, to get back to their beginning.  Not courageous so much as what I was meant to do, what I had to do...

And in the process, I've recovered who I am.  I made it back to my beginning and I've been re-born.  I survived to learn that I am stronger than I ever knew.  And I discovered that Dad was not always right...not about me anyway.  Dad raised me and taught me many things and I love and miss him immensely for it.  But nobody, not even Dad, gets to define who I am.  I am me and that is for me alone to define.

Surfing is not a disease; surfing is my salvation.  Surfing is my friend; surfing stood by me all those years.  Surfing gave me life.  It is something I knew I had to do from the first moment I knew of it.  Like that salmon heaving itself upstream, it is what I was meant to do; who I am meant to be.

Of course, surfing does not wholly define me either.  It is not all of my identity or all I am.  There is much more to me, and I am discovering more of myself each and every day.  But, I am not only someone who surfs...I am...a surfer.