Interview: Dr. Antonio Puente

Show Notes

Dr. Antonio Puente’s Website

Dr. Puente’s Twitter Feed

Blue Mind Research and References

Interview with Blue Mind instigator Dr. Wallace J Nichols on The Unmistakable Creative

Introduction to Aloha

Waves to Wisdom post about Aloha

Transcript

Tony: it was a very difficult time but then you know it’s when things are falling apart is when you really get a chance to make things happen so as I tell somebody when I took over the position, I’m tenured, I got my citizenship and I don’t give a shit.

Maia: I’m Maia Dery

How do you feel when somebody or something with much more power than you have, knocks you down? Or tells you or maybe even shows you aren’t good enough?
What do you do about it?
Get back up?
Struggle to not believe the naysayer? Or ignore the knock-down?
Try to learn something so you can come back with more capacity and strength? 

When I recorded this interview with Dr. Antonio Puente, who, among other things, is an avid surfer and celebrated neuropsychologist, we couldn’t know how much this pandemic would knock us all down. But I suspect that, had we known about the coming challenges, the interview wouldn’t not have been much different. 

Surfing and all ocean play, after all, are practices of scanning, of seeking, of developing relationship with something powerful over which you have absolutely no control and, at least for the first umpteen years, of getting knocked down over and over again. The kind of play is also a way to connect, with yourself, with the more than human world, and with other humans. Whether you love waves or weaving, hiking or haiku writing, some kind of passionate, disciplined engagement in an endeavor that allows your body to come into nuanced collaboration with the wider world is, I believe, one of the most rewarding ways to inhabit your time. In Dr. Puente’s case, it seems to have helped him overcome some long odds and some powerful forces that might have kept him from becoming who he is now. In addition to being an inspiring surfing story this tale of an immigrant boy overcoming long odds is, I think, also a great American story.

This episode is dedicated, with love and so much aloha, to the memory of Tiko Losano.

Welcome to Waves to Wisdom

Antonio: I’m Antonio Puente, or Tony as some people call me. I started surfing I believe in 1964, in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. It’s been quite some time.

Maia: So, you were just little boy.

Antonio: Yep, on a wooden, woody surfboard. It looked more like a battleship than a surfboard. As you paddled out the waves actually broke for you.
..this is not, you know, as you catch the wave, as you paddle out, as you paddle out the waves would part for you.

Maia: You had a little Moses effect on them. Would you just talk a little bit about where we’re sitting right now?

Antonio: Sure, this is a club called The Surf Club. It’s towards the north end of Wrightsville Beach and it’s a beautiful, small pavilion overlooking the ocean. And we’re very fortunate to be away from the wind but in front of the view.

Maia: And the sun has just come up above the water’s edge and it is a gorgeous morning here! Okay, I would love to start by talking a little bit about your childhood.

Antonio: Well, I was born and raised in Cuba. I was privileged. One side of my family was involved with rum. The other side of the family was involved with legal affairs. In fact, my maternal grandfather was head of the legal department at Bacardi. So we were well to do. Had my own nanny and a chauffeur at that. And then after Castro took over we came to the United States on November 6, 1960 with $300 and a change of clothes and no knowledge of what we were getting into. We assumed a good revolution in Latin America would only last a little while and we would return… well, that was 1960.

Maia: It was a while ago.

Antonio: It was a while ago.

Maia: Do you have any memories of Cuba from your childhood?

Antonio: Yes, I do. I not only have memories but they’re reinforced on regular occasion by the family and especially my Mom and Dad talking about Cuba. And then subsequently I returned to Cuba, first almost 40 years later in 1999. And have returned pretty regularly since then. So, I left as a refugee and I come back as a decorated psychologist.

Maia: How about that! And did you and your family speak English when you came here with $300?

Antonio: No, my mom did. She had gone to boarding school, high school in Philadelphia but my dad and my brother and I didn’t know. In fact I remember it being explained to me that “I know this is maybe odd for me to tell you, Son but they don’t speak Spanish here.” I said, What am I gonna do?” And she said “Ah, you’ll figure it out.”

Maia: Oh my goodness! How old were you then?

Antonio: I was almost 9 years old [almost 9]— nine years old in North Miami Beach. We lived in a 1-bedroom apartment with two families, my brother and I were very fortunate, we had the kitchen floor to sleep on. [Wow] So we were the only ones who had a private room.

Maia: Wow, okay incredible— so you went right into an English speaking school system then I imagine?

Antonio: Right.

Maia: So then you were surfing the whole time then, in Miami?

Antonio: No, in Miami I didn’t get a chance to go to the beach very often. We were just trying to figure out how to get food and learn the language. We subsequently moved to San Antonio, Texas when I really first came in contact with what I guess we call discrimination. I realized at that point even though I was a child, despite the fact we didn’t have food, and then at one point, we didn’t have housing as well, that there was very active discrimination and there was a pecking order, at least in the United States in Texas at that time. There were the white people and then there were the black peopled then there were the brown people. So considering that we were really out for the count and we were being discriminated against, it seemed to my mom and dad that, if we were going to suffer, under those circumstances, we might as well be among other people that were similarly like-minded.

So we returned to Florida where my family settled in Jacksonville, Florida

Maia: And there are waves— as opposed to San Antonio and even Miami there are consistent waves in Jacksonville.

Antonio: And that’s where I first came in contact with waves because one of my father’s friends Cezar Garcia, had a son that— who knows exactly how, he had been exposed to surfing and he was always willing to give me a ride to the beach. From 1964-65 on I went to the beach with him as often as he would and I’ve continued surfing ever, ever since then.

Maia: And you ultimately decided that you interested in psychology and went to graduate school and…

Antonio: Yeah as far psychology, I was really curious about how people came to understand and engage and successfully adapt to the world and it seemed to me that psychology was as good a discipline as any that that provided a vehicle to address those issues. It came to me in my first psychology course in a small community college in Jacksonville, Florida. It actually was a segregated grammar school that had just been given over to this fledging concept which was junior college in those days. So, I went there then subsequently the University of Florida where I was able to continue surfing and subsequently to, to pursue the career at the University of Georgia where there were no waves but on to graduate school and psychology as a formal career path.

Maia: What, what a fascinating motivation that the curiosity about how people adapt to the world. So, we’ve surfed together a few times at this point in Wrightsville Beach where it’s a home break for both of us, including it really spectacular surf morning a couple of couple of days ago.

Antonio: It was the vibe of Wrightsville Beach, aloha spirit all over the place with wonderful little waves.

Maia: It really was. So many people, it was very crowded, it was it was the kind of day when I normally would not have gone where we went, but because I was with you I did and I was so grateful because I was surrounded by people but they were the best people.

Antonio: We’re very fortunate.

Maia: It was wonderful, it was like being in a welcoming friend’s home, it was really fantastic. Okay so you went to graduate school and you told me a story previously that I hope you’ll tell again about wanting to put together what were then, speaking of segregation, two really separate areas of psychological inquiry.

Antonio: At that point I was curious about this issue of adaptability, understanding the world and moving forward and it seemed to me that studying abnormal behavior was really successful because some people would make it and others wouldn’t but the mechanism that would mediate the entire process to me seemed to be the brain. And unfortunately at the University of Georgia then, even now, the individuals that study abnormal behavior were the clinical psychologists, they were on the first floor. The people who study the brain were primarily studying animals and normal behavior, like learning, and they were on the sixth floor.

I wanted to bridge the gap between those two… I did so by getting a Masters in, what was it January 6, 1978 and then I defended my dissertation January 13th, 1978 so I did them pretty much in parallel fashion rather interactive which is what I was hoping to achieve.

Maia: One of the things that I have noticed since learning how to surf breakfast yeah one of the things that I’ve noticed since learning how to surf is, it looks to me as though, certainly from my own experience and from observing others, that many surfers, not all, but many tend to have the capacity to see past artificial barriers that we erect. And I spent 17 years in an academic world and there is really nobody like academics to construct some really impenetrable barriers, especially between disciplines. I wonder if your habit of surfing and all of this fluidity and these distant horizons might have helped you understand that these two things are not actually separate?

Tony: Well, let’s go back to your comment, you said regarding academics, having been in academia formally since I was the age of 18 and continuing as a Professor of Psychology at the University in Wilmington, I can’t tell you how surprised I am, even after all these years, the unbelievable politics associated with academia. People fight so aggressively over so little to accomplish even less than that. It is beyond surprising.

You kind of wonder— there are certain places that life should be pure and the pursuit of knowledge and dissemination of that information seems to me that would be an obvious place were peacefulness, truth, collaboration, and collegiality should be present to try and move the big agenda of our world forward. I have to tell you it is still a surprise to me that that has not occurred. But that has been the place where I chose to pursue a career largely because of the opportunities that academia does have. For example, access to young people, access to thinking what you want, when you want. As long as you produce then maybe you’re in a position to do that, but academe has been the foundation for where I was able to pursue that.

Now at same time it seemed like a fulcrum needed to be established so I could handle that. Because, whereas I was very interested in the pursuit of knowledge and dissemination of what I knew, as well as having access to young people, and fresh ideas, etc. I also felt that that aggressive attitude that seemed to be so contraindicated in the pursuit and discovery, of knowledge— that I needed something that would help balance that. And for me that was living at the beach so I could somehow or other manage that, that difficulty which was present, ever since I came to the US, in many ways. And has continued even to this day. A place where I could disappear, at least emotionally and mentally, that would help ground and establish a place to, to provide a balance that can only be achieved if a fulcrum had been set up— on one side the motivation for the pursuit of information, knowledge, discovery, on the other side a sense of well-being and, as you sometimes say, wisdom, that really is hard to find anywhere else except when you come in regular contact with lots of water.

Maia: Yeah, we talked a little bit about this but there is a loose association of researchers and an idea called “Blue Mind.” People are studying something that many of us know intuitively that being around the water feels good and you go from the water back to whatever world you live in on dry land rejuvenated, relaxed, and potentially more creative and effective than you would’ve been if you had not.

Tony: Yes, I’m familiar with Blue Mind and actually we use it at the American Psychological Association, at least one branch of it. Yeah, to me, some how or the other I don’t know the science of it but I know the life of it. So it’s been part of who I am for that matter, my immediate, and my extended family.

Maia: Alright, well that observation is really interesting to me because you’re in a position to understand how the brain is actually responding to this stimulus much better than I am. You wrote a paper in which you were talking about the traditional mind-body split we have in Western culture and the ways that psychologists have approached behavior and brain over the history of the profession and you came up with the phrase “reverse epiphenominalism,” which is so interesting to me. My understanding if that is that it’s not just our brain that dictates behavior but that what we do in the world and the ways we think in turn create the ways that our brains act. Is that part of what was in the paper?

Tony: Pretty much. It was my way of trying to get some understanding of how is it that we end up producing who we are. It really is an idea that emerges from the work of my intellectual mentor Roger Sperry who discovered the two sides of the brain. His concept was pretty straightforward, and that is that neural structures of the brain give rise to a mind or consciousness and in a sort of epiphenomena, upward causation and then the consciousness in turn dictates how the neural structures underneath end up functioning. And that’s sort of downward causation. So it’s a reverse epiphenomena because we think of epiphenomena as an outgrowth of something but this is the outgrowth of the outgrowth. So, it’s a unified system of function.

Maia: Interesting, okay so if someone, for example, like you had a multi-decade habit of, of going to the water as a way to make sense of, recover from, regenerate for life— especially that they sort of intensely intellectual world that you live in to have this embodied practice, it could potentially change the way your brain was structured and functioned. Is that correct?

Antonio: I don’t know, certainly could be, I don’t, I don’t again I don’t know the science, I don’t do the science of surfing at all but I certainly do the lifestyle pf surfing and I think it’s been endemic and core to who I am and maybe has allowed me to maybe to engage life in a more successful fashion than I would’ve done otherwise.

I always wonder, for example, if I had been given the opportunity, which I was it and seized it, to go to New York University where I would work tons of hours a week and be exposed to asphalt rather than water, what would’ve happened. I wonder whether I would have ended up in the same place, unlikely. And I wonder if I would’ve been as successful, unlikely, and maybe as comfortable with life, most unlikely.

Maia: Really interesting. So, let me just, for anybody who doesn’t understand the significance of what you said, you were essentially offered what in your professional world would’ve been an extremely high-status job at one of the premier tier 1 research institutions in the country and you decided that it was more important to be someplace where you can access this lifestyle?

Antonio: Well I thought the lifestyle was really important to both raise a family and have a personal life but have a balance with my professional life and I… whereas I think being in a top-tier university may have been very useful in my career and probably in anybody’s career at the very beginning, there comes a time in a career where the institution stops caring a person and that person starts carrying the institution. And that lifestyle becomes really critical. I’ve never been one of the opinion that you should ignore your personal life as you pursue your professional one. In fact, I thought that having both successful would be very good. I often tell my kids it’s not that hard to be a successful academic but it might be not as hard to have personal life that’s also gratifying but it’s insanely difficult to do both and when you do both you and end up having great results.

Maia: Present company a testimony to that fact! Fantastic, so, my understanding is that you recently spoke at a commencement ceremony?

Antonio: Oh, yes that was, that was really surrealistic. I spoke the Department of Psychology commencement ceremony in Athens, Georgia. It was really pretty gratifying. It was a great audience, several hundred students graduating but was what was really unique— it was actually two things were unique. The chairman of the department was the mentor of my oldest son who graduated from the University of Georgia as I did. But also when I was a student there in 1974-75. Specifically, I recall being told that I didn’t know enough English to be able to succeed as a psychologist. And I was encouraged to to leave the University and possibly psychology. So I took a, a few weeks off, went surfing, to be honest, worked at a psychiatric hospital, the 11-7 shift. I couldn’t tell difference between the residents and me at that particular juncture of my life. But did that, surfed in the morning, and came to the conclusion that they were wrong and returned and off to the races I went.

Maia: Oh, my goodness, that gives me chills that the waves told you that or that you were able to hear that from yourself in those waves.

Antonio: Yeah, they were important in trying to reestablish that balance I had lost by spending nine months not being very successful. So it was really great to return. I’d been there as a student, an unsuccessful one and I was there as a parent cause two of my kids ended up going there. But this time I came back as a celebrated, distinguished alumni. When they invited me I said “Are you sure? Forty some years ago you guys were asking me to leave the program and now you’re you asking me to speak at your commencement. Their response was “That was then, this is now.”

Maia: It’s a different world in some ways, that’s quite something. And, and one of your, one of your many roles in addition to being a professor at UNC W and an avid surfer is you’re head of a branch of the American Psychological Association. Would you tell us a little bit about that?

Antonio: Sure. I’ve been involved with organized psychology for many years in one role or another and I particularly was interested in making sure that psychology had a seat at the table rather than a line on the menu and the goal was basically to get this way of thinking more active in our society and, uh I decided to become or run for the position of president which after a couple tries I was unusual opportunity to you become that as 125th president 2017. That was a particularly tough period for our society, also for our country. I inherited an association that was essentially broke and fragmented largely because of the assault on such things as science and the importance of person and diversity in our society, largely because of the current administration. And it was a very difficult time but then you know it’s when things are falling apart is when you really get a chance to make things happen. So as I tell somebody when I took over the position, I’m tenured, I got my citizenship and I don’t give a shit. So, let’s make things happen.

You know. I left my country, left everything so no reason to be cautious during times of crisis. So we were able to turn the ship around and in the process we realized that we do not have infrastructure to do advocacy which is so important in our society. Somebody has to carry the flag of discovery, the flag of truth, and of diversity, and of decency. We didn’t seem to have that in any way, shape, or form. So we started a new association that is part of of APA and I took that over when it started earlier this year. So I finished my tenure as president, and took over in this particular capacity at the present time.

Maia: Excellent and so now you, having engineered the organization so that it can support advocacy, you are actively engaged in doing that.

Antonio: That’s right. We now have an infrastructure. We have 20 attorneys, a director of advocacy. 60% of the basic budget, the membership fees, excuse me, that comes into this association gets directed to this activity. So we now have an economic revenue source and we’re developing the agendas as we move forward with the basic foundation that if, if it has to do with human behavior and has to do with science then we’re there to provide direction and as much as possible advocacy.

Maia: Okay well to bring us to a level that people can understand what you mean when you say advocacy, what would be an issue that right now and 2019 your branch of the organization is actively engaged in trying to address?

Antonio: Well I’ll give you one very specific one and one that applies to me as well. For a long period of time back I did not have appropriate papers, I was an undocumented individual. In fact, in fact, in 1978 I entered the country from Grenada, West Indies, not realizing I was undocumented and had been undocumented for 10 years. So I’m one of those undocumented people we talked about. And also, as you know, the president of the Association and so, so involved in our society today. So, so we held hearings in Congress and now we’re trying to develop bipartisan support to make sure that we don’t separate children from their parents and that we come up with a reasonable approach to border security. I am not against border security but I am against dehumanizing people and causing trauma. In some ways what we’re doing to these children and these families will cost the United States a lot of money, a lot of pain, and more importantly, loss of direction of who we are a country.

Maia: Here, here. Yes!

It’s really quite a story for the ages and for this age in particular. You’re a living example of how somebody can come in with no skills relevant to the workforce, being a child who had no English, and wind up really changing our country for the better on a very high level.

Antonio: Well, whereas I appreciate on the surface the idea of, you know, let’s populate certain skill sets that we need, for example, computer programmers or coders and so forth, the idea that we are no longer going to value family as a way to populate the immigration system shows a lack of, of empathy, understanding of how human nature works. And also, also this is really important, we were founded on an open attitude about people.

Maia: Yeah, one aspect of your work that I think is particularly interesting is your legal work. Would you talk about that a little bit?

Antonio: Sure. When I started this work on cultural neuropsychology the idea was to understand the role of culture and how is it playing in brain mediation of discovery and adapting and in the process it became more pragmatic in terms of trying to figure out what tests could be used to were measuring the construct in question. For example, intelligence, rather than some variable that was extraneous, such as time. So the, the idea became develop tests that were true to the concept rather than the measure of a variety of things that provided all kinds of problems and errors in our understanding of the client or the patient.

And in doing so, I started getting more focused on developing appropriate test for Spanish speakers which is a large population United States and a huge population of the rest of the world. There are very few neuropsychologists in general almost none who speak Spanish, about 50 of us in the United States.

And unbeknownst to me, some of this became interesting to the legal field. Specifically, individuals involved in the death penalty. Because it turns out an increasingly large percentage of individuals on death row are Spanish speakers and for what it’s worth it turns out that Hispanics are sentenced to die four times more frequently than Caucasians and for African-Americans is three times. So, a disproportionately large number of them were being sentenced to die and the question was, are we simply not understanding these individuals? So, I started being called upon first, interestingly, in a local county and then subsequently throughout the US. In fact, I have a case coming up next week in New York. The goal is to go discover what’s going on with this individual and make a reasoned estimate of whether their brain is affected.

So, along those lines I have been working on doing neuropsychological assessments of Spanish speakers that have been sentenced to die— I don’t know for sure I think I’ve done between 100-150 these cases throughout the US. It continues being a significant part of my work I see more patients who are clinical, if you will but the bulk of my time seems to be in these death penalty cases, that they take hours and hours and hours. I just finished a case and worked on for approximately 10 years, several hundred hours. I interviewed the family tested the went to their hometown, Mexico. When you, when you get to that level analysis not only do you know the brain, but you know this person probably be better than they know themselves. And the goal is to provide information to the court so they make a good decision, make sure that we’re not sending to do someone just because of their culture or other misinterpretations. The goal is to provide good data, as best scientific information as you can at that particular instance so the issues are just entirely legal rather than anything else.

Maia: Fascinating— yeah, seems so important because many of the people who are making decisions in court, the judges or the attorneys who are structuring the argument may not have the cultural competency to put the context to it…

Antonio: Could well be! I’ll give you an example. In Harris County, which is basically the county seat of Houston, Texas sentences to die more people in that county alone per year than the entire world combined. [Wow] There can’t be that many [unbelievable]. So, there’s something awry and my job is to bring an understanding to a very complicated situation. Justice obviously goes both ways— for that person who has been victimized as well as the person who is being sentenced. But either way the goal is to erode error and increase accuracy.

Maia: Wow, such important such important work. Okay, just to put this in a nice little package. You have a very busy academic post at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, you have graduate students, undergraduates, departmental responsibilities, you’re director of a branch of the American Psychological Association, you have this active practice as a legal expert providing this kind of crucial context in capital, mostly capital cases. You overcame a language barrier and economic hardships to achieve all this professional success. What do you think has been your greatest success?

Antonio: Well, for me the greatest success, in general, has been raise— raising three very normal children, all who surf. LAUGH All decent human beings that contribute to society.

But maybe one of my greatest successes, at least this question was asked me when I was president, “What’s been your greatest success as president of APA?” I’m sure there’s something more tangible than I can provide than what I’m doing now, but probably one of the greatest things that came to my mind immediately was that I surfed in three different continents in one week as president of the US (sic). I surfed in Europe, and I surfed here in the states and then I surfed in South America. It seems to me that if I consider that to be a crowning achievement of my year as 125th president of United States, excuse me, of not of the US but of the American Psychological Association [wouldn’t that be wonderful if you were!]. LAUGH Oh that was a Fruedian slip! But if I could be president of the society and that was my greatest accomplishment one could argue that maybe I have my head in the right place.

Maia: I would absolutely argue that, yes! So it’s, it’s a very busy job, has you traveling all over the place and some of those places you are able to get in the water…

Antonio: If I have the opportunity, if it’s close to the water, I’ll make an effort to make that happen, which is always extremely gratifying and to my hosts extremely surprising.

Maia: You are a distinguished character and so to don a wetsuit or some board shorts and take a big board out in the water and you are a shredder, you know, to really catch and ride, gracefully, some big waves— I’m sure it gives them pause.

Antonio: Well, I’m not sure I’m a shredder, I’m probably closer to a kook but either way it’s a pause for those people who are not familiar with this lifestyle.

Maia: Do your children surf?

Antonio: Yes, all my children surf and my wife, in her day, used to boogie board as well. So, in fact, all of them grew up literally a few feet from where we’re having this discussion. We bought an old house here at Wrightsville Beach and didn’t have enough money to establish a heating and air conditioning system but we did have a small tent that we would pitch up, or at least my wife would, every day and the kids would just spend their days on the beach. So they all grew up right here. And as soon as they could, put a little life vest on ‘em and then boogie board, after that a board. They all still do it.

Maia: So this practice has really been central to your personal life for your entire adulthood?

Antonio: Yeah, and for my kids [and for children] yeah, as a matter fact we try to take a family vacation every year and we’re going to do so, this year all of us. To where I took my wife on a honeymoon and I told her we’re going to some of outer island in the Bahamas. She goes, “What’s there?” I said “I think there’re waves.” And we’re going back to celebrate the beginning of our married life which started with riding waves in the middle of nowhere in the outer Bahamas.”

Maia: So wonderful! And how many years have you been married now?

Antonio: I think 100…

Maia: One hundred years, ok good

Antonio: We were married in 1977.

Maia: Okay, beautiful and your children are grown now?

Antonio: Yep. My daughter’s a psychologist in Melbourne Florida and she and the kids live the beach life. My other son, my oldest son, Nicky’s a neuropsychologist at George Washington University and he still surfs as well. And then Lucas, my youngest son, is married and has a kid and lives in Northern California and surfs from Santa Cruz to right below the Golden Gate Bridge, which is Fort Point which I always worry about because between him and the open ocean and lots of current is not much.

Maia: Right! Yeah that is a… it’s a dynamic ocean environment there. But talk about a selection of waves, wow!

Antonio: He gets the better waves of all of us.

Maia: Yeah…So, one of the papers that you wrote which I was particularly fascinated by, addressed cultural bias in testing children for cognitive impairment and in particular a relationship to time, would you talk a little bit about that?

Antonio: Yeah, we’ve actually done research on the topic for a number of years. My area’s primarily neuropsychology and specifically the relation between culture and brain function and the idea of how culture plays a role in understanding how people discover it, understand it, and adapt to it, and the difficulties that some people have with it, and the success of others who are fortunate to have been able to conquer it. So we’ve dedicated many years of study on that and in many countries, whether it’s South Africa, Russia, Spain, Cuba, among others— we discovered that sometimes we misunderstand what the construct is that we’re trying to measure, to understand what is it that the person is all about. For example, in the case of intelligence. And that is, how is it that we determine whether the child is smart or not?

So, instead of telling you a story about our research I’ll tell you a story about myself. So, when I was first given these tests, I don’t recall much about them because I didn’t know English. So my mom just said “They’re going to give you some tests. Just do your best, be courteous.” And I’m almost sure that diagnosis to this day may have been “moron but friendly.” [Laugh- oh my goodness!] I had no idea what they were asking me!

“What are the colors of the US flag?”
“Whatever you’re asking me, I’ll just smile.”

So in that case they misunderstood intelligence with, with language. And in the case of people who speak Spanish, time is something that we enjoy. In the United States time is something you conquer. So, the faster you do something, the smarter you are. In our country, the more you savor it, the smarter you are. 

So when you have those constructs mixed, you may have a kid who enjoys the experience. As my own child, Nicki, when he took those exams as a small kid, he was enjoying it and he asked all kinds of questions so he got a low score as well. I said Nikki, “No, this is not what you’re supposed to do. So it had nothing to do with intelligence it had to do with your approach to problem-solving and sometimes we confuse the two. 

I sometimes say that I spent my time trying to figure out why people from Latin America score by 15 points, or one standard deviation lower than their counterparts in the United States? And why is it that after all these years we’re trying to figure out why they’re not as smart as people from US, here I am at 67, still trying to figure out why they’re not that smart but they all have retired back to Central America…

Maia: LAUGH— Who is the smart one?

Antonio: Who is the smart one?

Maia: Oh my gosh, that is, that is remarkable. Yeah, I spend a lot of time in this, in a Spanish-speaking country Costa Rica— this beautiful little, little village that has a lot of ex-pats, many of whom are fluent in Spanish. And my Costa Rican friends have watched me struggle to try to learn Spanish for five years now and get almost nowhere, and I’m pretty sure their diagnosis would also be “moron but friendly.” LAUGH

Antonio: As long as you try. [laugh] But we’re discussing, I think, more important than the construct of intelligence or even language is the construct of culture. Cause, one thing is to speak the language, another one is to appreciate the culture. And that’s a whole lot more complicated. Going back to Costa Rica, things just don’t happen fast. [never] And if you go with the attitude “I want this solved today” by going to a store or a government agency, it just doesn’t happen. And people are going to view you as an irritant, as difficult, as arrogant, when in reality you’re not. You’re trying to solve a problem. And you have to put in the context of that— that’s what the brain does.

And for that matter that’s what surfing does. It puts a context in place. Because otherwise, you get so busy and so full of “I got to get another publication. I gotta earn another dollar. I gotta fix another patient.” And then when you come here you realize— Well, it’s not that simple. It’s a bit more complicated.

Maia: Yeah, the late, in my estimation great, Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue said that that a lot of Westerners, Americans in particular, tend to be victims of their time instead of inhabitants of it. And I have found for myself and maybe you’re saying also for you, that surfing really does help me inhabit my time. It makes me able to live in this moment instead of according to the “to do” list.

Antonio: And to establish your true North because otherwise you get caught up in the system. We talked yesterday how religion very often provided a framework for many of us and then industrialization and consumerism has done that in the recent past but you know both have left us with big vacuums. In some ways surfing provides a way to resolve that vacuum which is so critical.

You know we’re in this for the long haul. This is a marathon not a sprint and I think surfing allows you to, to think of drinking that water during that marathon otherwise you get dehydrated and you lose.

Maia: Beautiful analogy! So the underpinnings and framework of the Waves to Wisdom project is that surfers’ regular involvement in the natural world, in this medium, this dynamic, embodied activity, and in general, adapting it for people who don’t surf or don’t love water, just a really important play discipline, a discipline of playfulness and embodiment that, that’s central to your life. That, that’s crucial and it’s something that’s missing from a lot of our lives in and I think our culture unfortunately has promoted this bifurcation where, you know, children can play for a minute… We seem to let them play in an unstructured way less and less, children can play but grown-ups have to settle down to the grim business of earning money and counting pennies, making sure there are always more and are there practical benefits that you haven’t mentioned to having this regular play discipline, that you can tell people about.

Antonio: I’m not sure if I can articulate it but I will say generally for me it’s a re-centering, it’s critical. I’m not sure if it’s the washing of the waves or the act of surfing or the disconnect. It’s really hard to be thinking about how to cut the grass or how to earn income when you’re out there. You just, it sort of absorbs you, literally and figuratively in a way that people talk about in contemporary terms as mindfulness. It, it takes away from the logical, sequential that were so focused on a day-to-day basis to the Gestalt, the emotional, and it just washes away all those worries and sort of resets, re-calibrates. I think for me that’s the takeaway.

Maia: Okay, I’ll just give you an example of something that I noticed when I started surfing, speaking to artificial barriers, I grew up in ACC sports country. I grew up in Durham in the county, situated between Durham and Chapel Hill North Carolina. And this is some virulently fanatical basketball culture and so there were very competitive sports teams in my youth and I’ve never been athletically gifted. And came out of youth with a little bit of a complex that I couldn’t hang with the real athletes, the strong big agile fast people. And when I learned how to surf I found that one of the many beautiful things about the sport is that kind of diversity. I can go out and have and have actually interviewed someone, I can go out with somebody who was a Division I college athlete, who is my physical superior in every athletically measurable way and we’re both having a great time, we’re both challenged and it really helped me dissolve that interior barrier that I had constructed over the course of my youth and that in and we’ve had conversations about that the professional we don’t have a ton of racial diversity in the surf line up where we are but but the professional diversity, you have plumbers and electricians and neuropsychologists, everybody is out there and nobody even knows what anybody does. [or cares] or cares! And so there’s this mental construct that I had erected in my life and surfing really helped me dissolve that barrier, helped me learn how to get up after I’ve been knocked down in new ways.

Antonio: Well, since you— I talked about the personal side of things it, it’s a way to recalibrate, and appreciate what’s important, what’s much less important. But you addressed the issue of the social side of things. Let me address that as well, and that is in terms of the “aloha spirit” as we often refer to. We don’t really seem to care too much about what you do for a living and in the lineup for that matter people don’t seem to be terribly concerned about whether you’re good at surfing or not. What they’re concerned about is more like, can you bring something to the equation? Can you bring a good vibe to this group. Can you give a good story? Are you the one that’s willing to share the wave? And for that matter, are you willing to give to the community which you are part of? So, nobody really is very concerned whether you’re “a shredder” but we are extremely concerned if you are willing to take off on people or if you’re rough. On Sunday will we caught those, oh Monday, when we caught those wonderful waves there was a guy that came out to the lineup who got right in the middle of us and one of the older guys, a guy from Hawaii said, “Hey, Dude, you gotta wait your turn.” 

And the guy says “I’ve been here since the beginning, who in the hell are you?” This is not the kind of attitude that we want. As Tiko, the one I was referring to, he calls this our happy place. We, we don’t want you to come in here and give us what we call “aggro attitude.” This is not where it’s at.
And this carries into the community as well. We help each other when there’s a need. And one of us lost their husband she now has significant Parkinson’s disease so when she needed a roof we put our two cents in and got her a roof or when she needs her yard cut…

So, the aloha spirit starts in the water continues onto the land.

Maia: It really does and I’m personally not a churchgoer and had never really felt like I was missing that from my life but when I started to surf at 40 and it began to really, I think, occupy a lot of the place that church occupies for many people, I realized how important that community aspect of what sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to as “collective effervescence,” where people come together and celebrate something. And it really does feel as though surfers do that— celebrate not just the beauty of the ocean and the excitement and dynamism of the waves, but just the incredible gift of being alive to enjoy them together.

Antonio: Yeah, and that’s it that’s what happened— we didn’t plan it but the waves were fun, the water was clear, and the vibe was amazing. When people took off, “Go Maia! You go, Girl!” Come back, you might talk some trash, and yeah it’s, it’s sort of an ecologically valid church, if you will.

Maia: Yes, yes! That is exactly what it feels like! Is there anything else that you can think that you would like to tell people about?

Antonio: Well, you mentioned play, I never envisioned surfing as play, it’s more of a way of life but it does have a play attitude. The consequences are really somewhat irrelevant. The focus is on the process and I wonder whether you could emulate that in other ways? I don’t know, maybe— the other side of the coin is there more to it than surfing yet we focus on to how it surfing is critical to me as a human being and and to us as a community one wonders if everybody surfed whether we’d find ourself in this terrible mess that we are in with our country for that matter with our world.

Maia: There’s a fellow named Stuart Brown and he posits that playfulness at work, the capacity to act and feel occasionally as though you’re willing to risk failure, you feel like doing something just for its own sake not just because you’re required to, or paid to— that kind of attitude is is crucial to be successful on the level that you are successful. You think that your regular practice of play in the water has allowed you to potentially at times when it’s appropriate be more playful at work?

Antonio: Well maybe maybe not necessarily playful but, I think of my personal life as being relatively traditional and conservative but my professional life as being very unusual— the way I approached it, and how I managed it seemed to be very unusual and I don’t think I could’ve done that unless I had that foundation. In the United States— and I’m very involved in healthcare policy— it’s all about how you make money, but it’s very little about how you enjoy the experience and I think we would find ourselves in a much better place if we could balance the two.

Maia: In what ways were your professional maneuvers unconventional?

Antonio: Well, I went to a small school that had an ocean next to it, I was the first neuropsychologist, as far as I can tell, in the state of North Carolina. Those are two little examples. When I didn’t get promoted at the University of Georgia after my first year because of my lack of knowledge of the English language, I kept on going. When I was not given tenure at UNC Wilmington, I reapplied. These are not wise things to do but I understood who I was I thought it was a misunderstanding of the people who judged me. So I was able to maybe be more risk-focused?

Maia: Being a surfer myself I can absolutely see how a practice of surfing that set you up to get back up after somebody tried to knock you down.

Antonio: If things go bad to go surfing!

Maia: Yes, and then practice getting knocked down and get back up over and over again. That is so interesting!

One of the aspects of surfing that is is so powerful to me is the, I think the word that we have that best describes it is relationship, the way that the relationship between the surfer the surfer’s body, the surfer’s brain and body, and the ocean has to be the focus. You can’t be thinking as you say about mowing the lawn or earning more money and that regular requirements that we focus on relationship and all of the benefits that we gather from being present for that relationship, including and especially in our inter-human interactions. It really does for at least a subset of surfers, look to me like it enables us to go into the rest of our lives focusing on relationship and our bodies in relationship to our minds and relationship and worry less about the next level of meta-existence— the abstraction, the grades, the economy, the dollars.

Do you think that’s valid?

Antonio: Yeah, it puts it in focus. You stop worrying about accomplishing and start being more concerned about being there. Or just being mindful as the contemporary psychology folks are all talking about. We often think that success in how much money I make, how many publications I’ve achieved, or status in life, but we don’t measure very well, or even consider measuring very well, how much you enjoy living.

Maia: I can’t imagine anything more important than that.

Antonio: Well, we’ve structured an entire society and civilization where that doesn’t seem to be very crucial to our equation.

Maia: Yeah, we really have.

Antonio: You look at some of the statistics of why young men are dying or the opioid epidemic that we’re experiencing. Obviously people are trying to find happiness quickly in many cases unsuccessfully.

I think we’ve emphasized the importance of surfing as foundational. There must be, as the scientists and researchers involved in Blue Mind suggest, must be some foundation that’s scientific or empirically explained. I don’t know if, if I need that.

Roger Sperry who, as I said, was my intellectual mentor, the first psychologist to win the Nobel Prize, said that our job with science is to anticipate what nature will eventually give us. Maybe in terms of waves to wisdom, the wisdom in this process is that we don’t need scientist to validate the wisdom that the experience of being surrounded by water and participating in the act of surfing on a regular basis provides you but that wisdom is provided to us in other ways. In my case since 1964. I think I’m past needing science. I do know that it’s a requirement for me.

Maia: Surfing is a requirement for you?

Antonio: It’s a requirement for me.

Maia: You are a model of what this kind of integrated lifestyle can do for someone’s success. I mean there aren’t a lot of sixty-somethings in the hyper successful professional world who are as fit, active, healthy as you are. And, you know the big smile you have on your face all the time is testament enough.

Antonio: Well, maybe people think I’m smoking pot.

Maia: Laugh- instead of surfing waves…

Antonio: But that’s not true. I will tell you it’s a requirement and it’s necessary just as much as other things like eating, sleeping, it’s just part of the equation. So, waves to wisdom… Or, maybe the alternative should be wisdom to waves.

Maia: I love it! Thank you so much for your time!

Antonio: Oh, my pleasure!

Maia: I hope you found Dr. Puente’s story to be as inspiring and instructive as I did. Sharing these stories is a great privilege but I also have the honor of playing a role in stories I don’t share. If you’d like to have a conversation about whether I might be the right coach for you, visit wavestowisdom.com