Reminder: It’s OK To Have Fun Surfing

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

It was a gorgeous morning. The sun had just begun to crawl out of the clouds and cast its light across the bushy sprawl of the state park. The surf was firing — overhead proof of distant energy collapsing in a way that only the cobblestones of Lowers can induce. Everything was great. Everyone was angry.

As it turned out, the man being asked the above question was not kidding. He had been waiting half an hour, he said, and had seen the interrogator catch five waves during that period of time and so he burned him. The interrogator replied that he didn’t give a fuck, because he lives here. The burner said fuck you, I live here too. Aww. Just two neighbours having a chat.

Neighbors or not, the rest of the lineup was burning each other, yelling at each other, splashing each other, fighting each other, having sex with each other behind the toilets but out of spite instead of out of love. There were a lot of things happening between each and other. None of them were good.

Which made me think — is surfing broken?

Let’s be honest. In order to surf, you need to be somewhat wealthy in time, health and finance. Which is to say: you’re lucky to begin with. Multiply that by the fact that surfing puts you in some of the world’s most beautiful places, doing one of the world’s greatest things, and it all equates to you being a gigantic dickhead if you find a way to make it unenjoyable.

Waves are the obvious culprit of all the dickheadsmanship. Or really, the lack of waves, but still. If you don’t want to have to work hard for waves, don’t surf crowded waves. It’s not a complex concept. I’ve lived in some of the world’s most crowded surf zones and I’ve never had a problem escaping crowds. If you want to surf the world’s best waves, accept the fact that it’ll be challenging to get some and deal with it.

Sometimes, it’s good to forget about all the heats, hipsters, high-performance boardshorts, how your feet felt weird on that last cutback, etc, and think about why you surf. Not even why you started to surf — but the actual reason you walk away from work, family, friends and everything to take a floatation device in the ocean. Be positive. Enjoy it. You don’t need to play the ukulele and grow dreadlocks. You just need to remember that surfing is fun.

The best surfer in the water is not the one having the most fun and they will never be. But the one having the most fun is the most reasonable. Think about that for a second next time you threaten to skull-fuck your neighbour just after dawn or on a lovely Wednesday afternoon.