Waves are created from winds that surge from 4000 miles away. So when they emerge from the blue depths they are tired and want to rest-this is why they reach for the shore. Surfers it seems cheer them on in their journey as they await there homecoming. They cheer them on as they play and run with them to the shore sometimes holding hands as they crash and let out a final gasp. I was on a board today, I am not sure if I was surfing but I at least held hands with some serious waves while the cried out in thunderous exhaustion.
I was exhausted and my paddle proved it. I thought in my head that since I had swam back in high school and a bit this past year I would be rocking it throwing myself forward with every stoke. This was not the case and the experience evoked a real respect for the sport and to those who claim it as their own. Runners have always stuck out to me as people who embody the thing they love: they wear watches and wicking shirts and socks and sometimes underwear… wicking underwear that is. Runners usually wear underwear because they are always concerned with chaffing. Coming back, surfers not only embody something they love through culture and passion and community but they have their own way of seeing and communicating what they see. Sometimes this is lased with ‘dudes’ and ‘rads’ mostly it is found in stories.
These stories describe moments and images that are bright metaphors as one turns to envision their world. These stories are big and small. Some loaded with excitement and glory others without the glitz of the one time happening. Today I was sitting with Andrew and we were waiting up for my buddy Brian and I saw this old dude come out of the surf obviously done for the day carrying his board and was heading over to his truck. But before he got there he noticed some trash, just little pieces off on their own and he stopped chanced these renegades down and secured them in a trash can. It was for me a little narrative that had loads of relatedness to my life and how I want to live.
I want to love well and simplify and create and share and recycle-encouraging the kind of change I want to see in the world. But often I look to the horizon when I think on love and creation and sharing and recycling. This guy who has probably surfed the same spots for years has probably picked up dumpsters of trash, he was pretty old, trust me. It is the micro that shifts the macro. Kind of like a 33 year old rabbi who carried a cross through Jerusalem one Friday then was murdered in that small territory of the Roman Empire.
