An Oregon Perspective on Zen

They say that surfing is meditation. Surfing is supposed to reduce stress. It forces you to sit and wait patiently. Sometimes you wait a long time for a decent wave. More often than not, I find myself very very far from a state of 'zen'.

I remember a session I had last fall in Oregon. It was a beach break on an outgoing tide. It was dumping particularly hard. I botched a takeoff, as I so often do, but the wave took me and slammed me down and carried me farther inside.

I found myself struggling against wave after wave, heavy lips landing on my head over and over. It was like a beating dished out in steady increments, with little bouts of hacking seawater and desperate paddling in between. In a bout of frustration, I made quite the show of raising two middle fingers and cursing a wave looming in front of me. Its face growing darker and darker as I pushed through the water towards it. A day late and a dollar short. The wave dumped neatly just as I tried to paddle over its crest, throwing me down, rolling and scraping against the sand. I reemerged, blowing foam out of my nose and gasping through snot.

There are many virtuous qualities that I lack. But patience is the one that I'm always scraping the bottom of the barrel for. With my ultra-low patience reserves, I often wonder if I've chosen the wrong sport. On that heavy day in Oregon, who was I cursing at?

It's kind of like being stuck in traffic on the way to the surf, the last light of day creeping. You honk and yell at the cars in front of you. But in reality, there's no one responsible, nobody to be mad it. Sometimes traffic just sucks.

When the ocean knocks you on your ass over and over again, and you're scratching through the foam to find the surface, It almost feels personal. But then you remember that this is the ocean. Nothing is personal. Sometimes, it just beats the hell out of you. That's surfing. That's life.