Interview: Dr. Antonio Puente
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" ...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."
~Dr. Antonio Puente
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
Interview: Dr. Nathalie Arias
To listen to the interview, scroll to the Player at the bottom of the page.
"If you have the chance to get closer to the ocean that’s gonna be life changing. Maybe you’re not living the life you wanted or always expected to be, I think the ocean might help you a little bit to decide here’s my priorities now and this is what I want to do."
~ Dr. Nathalie Arias
Show Notes and Further Reading
Conocer: A Responsible, Socially Engaged Tour Operator in Nosara, Costa RIca
Interview Transcript
INTRODUCTION
My name is Maia Dery.
The Waves to Wisdom interviews are the result of an exploration into a world I discovered when I learned to surf at mid-life.
Some of these conversations aren’t necessarily with people who we would instantly recognize as leaders but they are all leading us in a direction I instinctively followed and have benefitted tremendously in the process. Some of them don’t have huge audiences, but they are living very large lives.
To me, these people all seem to have wisdom practices centered in their relationship to the more-than-human world, to what we usually think of as “nature.”
Surfing proved first revelatory, then revolutionary in my life. I thought I was creative, thought I knew and loved water, thought I took care of my body. But when I entered the world of surfing and waves, when I started to ritualistically return to a literal edge, I realized my vision for my life had been hampered by some artificial barriers.
Slowly, with each wave and wipeout, those barriers in my brain, heart, and body began to dissolve.
I began to wonder, what if we all had a nature based practice that cracked us open? Made us more creative? Allowed us to reliably let go with the abandon of play? Of unbridled joy? What if we all practiced vulnerability, risk and failure on a daily basis and they were fun? Wouldn’t it make our lives better? Wouldn’t it lead us to the places it feels like, in this moment of planetary peril, we need to go?
Whether you find full bodied and big hearted connection through waves or walking or digging in the dirt, I hope you find these conversations useful in your own journey of re-inhabiting your life with renewed joy, deep engagement, and increasing wisdom.
Dr. Nathalie: Dr. Nathalie: If you have the chance to get closer to the ocean that’s gonna be life changing. Maybe you’re not living the life you wanted or always expected to be, I think the ocean might help you a little bit to decide here’s my priorities now and this is what I want to do.
Maia: A couple of years ago, I left my full time job as a college instructor, one of the ways I dealt with the existential terror inherent in taking the leap into entrepreneurship and, even more frightening, radical freedom. I knew that, no matter what happened, I would be able to spend more time in the small rural community of Nosara Costa Rica, a place I’d fallen in love with because of its beauty and waves and light but even more, the open heartedness and zest for life of the of the locals and expats who live there.
Dr. Nathalie Arias is a physician, talented longboard surfer, and soon to be nutritionist who lives and practices in Nosara. In the process of facing her own health challenges, her professional journey took a turn when she became inspired to tend to and learn about her eating habits so she could continue to pursue her relationship with the ocean. Her story of a play practice leading to greater and more effective service is precisely the sort of narrative I keep running into as I deepen my own commitment to this pastime and all the embodied wisdom it has to offer to those of us willing to pay attention. I hope you enjoy Dr. Nathalie’s insight as much as I did. Welcome to Waves to Wisdom!
Dr. Nathalie: My name is Nathalie Arias. I’m 31 and I’ve been surfing for 5 years.
Maia: Five years okay excellent and we met in the water right off of Playa Guiones in Costa Rica and you are Costa Rican?
Dr. Nathalie: Yes
Maia: You were born where?
Dr. Nathalie: In San Jose?
Maia: Okay which is the capital city? [Yes] But you have family roots in Nosara?
Dr. Nathalie: My mom is from Nosara.
Maia: Okay
Dr. Nathalie: My whole… mom’s side is from Nosara.
Maia: And how did you wind up back here?
Dr.N: I mean I was always coming when I was little. Back and forth, back and forth for vacation and then I moved in 2014 after getting married.
Maia: So you married somebody who lives here? [Yes] And how is, how is Nosara different from San Jose?
Dr. Nathalie: Oh, everything.
Maia: Everything is different?
Dr. Nathalie: Yeah, I mean San Jose is like a small city, not so pretty, a lot of noise everywhere, uh, traffic, like every other city I guess…and you come to Nosara and it
Is just like a small paradise. Here on the peninsula, at least for me, I grew up there and now here every time I go back there it’s like, “Oh! Take me back to Nosara!” Yeah, it’s just like a different style of life and I’m just so used to be here now and we normally go there, and just like one or two days and then, back to Nosara!
Maia: If you were going to describe to somebody what it’s like to be here relative to in a city, what would you say?
Dr. Nathalie: It is… peaceful. Like, you are gonna see nature around you, birds, monkeys, yeah, it’s just like quiet.
Maia: So quiet. It’s just beautiful, isn’t it? [yes] Middle of the jungle really— it’s very rural here even though there are a lot of people coming through..
Dr. Nathalie: We have a lot of tourists here but we manage to have some quiet places.
Maia: So, did you learn how to surf when you moved back to Nosara?
Dr. Nathalie: My first wave ever was in 2012. [2012] But I didn’t have the chance to surf much or practice. My first green wave, it was amazing!
Maia: Your first green wave was amazing?
Dr. Nathalie: I have pictures of the whole sequence.
Maia: You do?!
Dr. Nathalie: It was a friend who was taking pictures and he took the whole sequence and I’m just like laughing really hard and I couldn’t believe it, I’m like looking behind me, “Whaaat?!?”
Maia: Oh, my goodness!
Dr. Nathalie: So that was like my first time ever, obviously but then after that I came back in 2014. I was not getting any better. I mean, I was really not strong enough because I was going once a week. My arms were like tired all the time. My sessions were like maybe three or four waves and that was like a lot already.
Maia: You were exhausted?
Dr. Nathalie: I was so exhausted and I mean it took me 2014-2015, maybe until 2016? I went like more regular like maybe 3-4 times a week.
Maia: Okay
Dr. Nathalie: So I feel like I started surfing like three years ago.
Maia: Wow! Okay, interesting.
Dr. Nathalie: I noticed what surfing was. It was like so hard for me just once a week and then now you go like, 3-4 times a week and, Oh! I can catch waves now! More than three or four every session. So that was pretty fun, actually.
Maia: But did you love it when you were only catching three or four waves a session? Was it still…
Dr. Nathalie: I did, yeah, no, it was good enough.
Maia: And how come you could only surf once a week when you first came here?
Dr. Nathalie: I was working from Monday through Saturday, like really early so I didn’t have the chance to. So Sundays was my only day.
Maia: And what’s your work?
Dr. Nathalie: I’m a medical doctor here in town. Yeah. Back then I was working in Nosara Town.
Maia: And Nosara Town’s about 6 km inland from [Guiones] the coast where we are now. And you were working, as I understand it, at the clinic?
Dr. Nathalie: Yeah, there was a new clinic there right after when I came and I was like, okay.
Maia: Okay, so that was the first couple of years. And then what happened that allowed you to surf more than just Sundays?
Dr. Nathalie: I moved out of that clinic and opened my own business, another medical office, like closer to the beach and I had my own schedule so I was able to go in the mornings— one, maybe two hours, 3-4 times a week now cause I was my own boss. So that allowed me to surf a little bit more.
Maia: And were you, I know you were learning to surf then, and I just want to say because, hopefully I’ll get to take some pictures of you before I leave to post with this interview, surfing, but you are an exceptionally talented and elegant long boarder [Thank you!] and when I was surfing for four years I think I was just figuring out how to turn the board. Uh, really you have a lot of natural ability and it’s just a pleasure watching you! [Thank you!] So, you were able to surf then three or four times a week, you’re still a medical doctor, you’ve opened your own clinic. What were you learning from surfing at that time in your life?
Dr. Nathalie: I think that I really wanted to surf and for that, I mean for me for me to be able to surf, I was learning also like how to eat healthy because I was not strong enough. My ams were like weak all the time, my back was hurting so I was learning like to stretch out more, to eat more healthy foods, sleep better and because I wanted to be more in the water. And it doesn’t matter, I was working the same, I don’t know, even more, like 10-12 hours a day but if I had like a two or maybe like an hour and 1/2 surfing in the morning, that was fine with me. I didn’t care like if I was working that much but I was being able to surf more during the week.
So I was learning like now I need to be able to work like 10- 12 hours and for this now I need to eat better, sleep better. I was not doing too good on my food because I was so used to the hospital like, like schedule— not eating sometimes, you know? Like during the whole day. So when I came here I was doing pretty much the same but then I was noticing that I was not able to surf good, or paddle, or even, like the waves were a little bit bigger I was like so done. And that that— I was not even in the lineup, it was taking me like 20-30 minutes, I was like, “Oh, there is something wrong with me!” I was just tired, I was not feeling my body, like the right way.
Maia: And surfing was teaching you?
Dr. Nathalie: Surfing was teaching me that it was really important to take care of your body in every aspect. I don’t know, like everything, I think was related to surfing back then and to learn how to handle the stress also from work, the patients and…
Maia: Okay— I find it fascinating that you had been to medical school which, in theory, is all about taking care of the human body
Dr. Nathalie: Except yours!
Maia: Except yours. LAUGH
Dr. Nathalie: Yeah it doesn’t matter you have to do everything for the patient. Yeah, it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to sleep, you don’t have to eat because you have to work to help the other people, right? Like in an emergency room, you have like 50 people and it’s just insane sometimes and then it doesn’t matter about, you have to do your job, that’s it.
Maia: That’s it! Yeah, so you had to go to the school of surf to learn how to take care of Nathalie’s body?
Dr. Nathalie: Yes
Maia: Dr. Arias needed the waves, so interesting. That, that life of owning your own clinic and you owned the pharmacy next door, is that right?
Dr. Nathalie: Mm hm, pharmacy and medical office
Maia: Okay, and that’s no longer the case you decided to make a change?
Dr. Nathalie: Yes.
Maia: How come?
Dr. Nathalie: I think I was I was working to much, well, not that much but um, I was very, being very careful with every client that comes to the pharmacy, I was treating them as a patient and that was a lot for me because they were not my patients. I wanted to be able to help them— okay, why is the headache? Have you being hydrating good? Sleeping good? Or maybe some type of food you ate? I was trying to find the root of the problem instead of just selling the pill. So I was treating every patient as a client, I mean every client as a patient, sorry, and that became a lot also. A lot of stress because I was worried about, you know like the one patient who came to buy just like Tylenol, “Oh, what if the headache is high blood pressure?” But then they didn’t have the money to pay for the consultation so I was like, you know, I think I was almost working, like double. So I decided to close the pharmacy and just get my practice
Maia: And so now you just have a medical practice.
Dr. Nathalie: Just have a medical practice.
Maia: And only house calls, right?
Dr. Nathalie:Yeah, only housecalls.
Maia: And is the lifestyle healthier now that you’ve made that change?
Dr. Nathalie: It is, for sure. Yeah I have more time for… to study, to work out, to surf. Now I just see the patient that really needs me you know, they call me, they make an appointment and I go to them so it allows me to have more free time to do more stuff. And you surf more? You do surf more?
Dr. Nathalie: I do surf more now.
Maia: Okay, so you learned to surf as an adult, as I did, you were certainly much younger than I was. Really, the motivation for this whole project and all of these interviews is the pattern that I think that I have recognized . Which is that for some surfers, it helps them, as it has you, as you’ve already articulated, it helps them be better humans. It helps them figure out how to take care of themselves both in an immediate sense, in the waves, and in a larger sense, because they want to be able, be healthy to get out into the waves [yeah]. Are there other lessons or aspects of being a wise that you think you’ve learned from the ocean and its waves?
Dr. Nathalie: Yes, big time. I think one of the biggest lessons I have learned is how to handle pressure because I can see it with my practice and I see it in the ocean when the sets are really big, the waves are like, not as nice as you want, or like when there are a lot of people and want to get a wave and there’s always somebody in front of you. I mean, that, that lesson from there, I use it a lot of, in my life, like pressure, how to handle pressure, like in every aspect like with my patient, like emergencies that just show up at my house because they know where I live. Um, I think that’s one lesson I’ve learned from the ocean.
And, being patient also. You have to be patient waiting for a nice wave. Maybe you don’t want that one and wait for the other one and somebody ’s gonna be in front of you again or behind you and then you have to wait again. So being patient also is one of the lessons I have learned from surfing and the same, I use it in my everyday life. With everything, pretty much.
Maia: Do you think there are ways in which surfing has helped you be a better medical doctor?
Dr. Nathalie: Yeah I think so like I use it with my patients. Sometimes you want the patient to do, to follow your recommendations and they don’t because the neighbor always has better advice and then you have to be patient. So I think patience is one of the biggest lessons and I think it makes me a better person or doctor because you have to be, you’ve got to understand what the person is going through, or telling you and why he decided not to follow the treatment or, yeah, I think it that helps a lot.
Maia: It’s pretty powerful if surfing can help a doctor be a better doctor.
Dr. Nathalie: It’s a little bit of everything, like being patient, you have challenges in front of you like the same way you are in the ocean, like you go expecting the waves are going to be nice and smooth and not so big and then, all of a sudden they’re like, oh, the swell is showing up and now you have these big waves and that’s a challenge already and then in the medical practice, we are so far away from everything that everything becomes like a challenge. Cause you don’t have the equipment or you don’t have like the tools sometimes and you have to figure it out and and if not send ‘em to a bigger facility. So that’s one big lesson for me also.
Maia: You have to be adaptable when you’re surfing, you have to know your limits and it sounds like you’ve had to do that in this rural practice.
Dr. Nathalie: Sometimes you try to help the patient and you realize okay, this is not my specialty but the patient doesn’t want to go to Nicoya because it’s too far and then you have to take a bus and it’s like two hours and a half but then you have to set the limits like you just said it, this is not my work and now I need you to go to a bigger facility and I have to learn also to let go of that part because sometimes I get like really attached and I really wish I could do more but then, no, I have to send the person or the patient somewhere else to get whatever the studies, you know, ultrasound, blood tests and all that that we don’t have here.
Maia: We don’t have any of that. So, we had a fascinating conversation the other day in the water about the difficulty of some of the local people to take time off of work to pay for care. Is that something that you ran into frequently when you were at the clinic— that people’s employers would not give them time off?
Dr. Nathalie: Yes, sometimes they’ve got good employers and they take the morning off and they go to the public clinic but it takes a while for you to be seen by the doctor. If not they to a private office so they choose where to go but sometimes it’s hard for them. If you don’t have the money you have to go through the public system and then you waste pretty much your whole day which is like a day of work and that’s one ways pretty much already hard for people because salaries here are not great and if you miss like a whole day it’s gonna, and the end of the week or two weeks for sure you’re gonna be short that money. And if you have a little bit of extra money you can go and pay private but still, once you get the medicine it’s really expensive. Also, cause medicine here is really expensive, so it’s a little bit of everything and if you don’t have the money and you don’t have the time and if your employer doesn’t give you the time either you’re just gonna hold the pain or whatever you’re having until it’s really, really bad, you might go and then it’s gonna be late.
Maia: Then it’s late, yes, maybe too late to do something. Yeah, it’s really, it’s a difficult thing, there’s so much inequality here, things are very expensive in part because there are a lot of people who can afford to pay high prices. But then the minimum wage is two or three dollars an hour and food here is exorbitant and I don’t know if medical care is exorbitant because, knock on wood, I haven’t had to…
Dr. Nathalie: It can be.
Maia: Yes…So were you a an ocean swimmer before you learned to surf?
Dr. Nathalie:No actually that’s embarrassing.
Maia: It’s embarrassing? What’s embarrassing?
Dr.N: Cause I was like 25-26 when I learned how to surf and I realized I didn’t know how to swim either. I was not a very good swimmer so when my leash broke that was like my first experience, it was like, “Oh! Now I have to swim but I don’t know how to swim.”
Maia: My goodness! So you’re the ocean [I’m in the ocean], your leash broke?
Dr. Nathalie: And I’m like freaking out, like about to cry and I’m looking for somebody that I know, for like help, you know I need help, cause I don’t know what to do. I know I can float but I don’t know for how long and I was getting tired and then my husband came and said, “Just stand up! You’re like right there on the sand.” [LAUGH] it was like, oh okay! So that was very embarrassing and after that I think I figured it out— I realized that I needed to know how to swim for me to be able to go and get bigger waves so I did some, not lessons, but with myself I out a snorkel and a mask and I would just swim in the swimming pool— one you put on a mask you can figure it out a little bit. [Interesting!] Yeah, and then I did a free diving course. And I think in that, it was like a 2-day course and those 2 days, once I did that, to learn the technique, how to breathe, and the safety techniques if you’re in the water and somebody’s blacking out or something like that I think after that I became, not a better swimmer but I was very confident surfing after that.
Maia: Interesting, so you didn’t know how to swim and then you learned how to swim a little bit and then you took a free diving course? [Yes] For anybody who doesn’t know explain to them what free diving is.
Dr. Nathalie: Free diving is, so they put you in a swimming pool and they teach you how to hold your breath, sort of like a static breath hold, and you have to be able to reach three minutes with that breath hold. And after that they take you to open water, like to the ocean, and you have to go down the line. The first level goes down the line 60 feet. So you have to be able to go back and forth with one breath, so I did it.
Maia: Let me just repeat this— you went from not being able to swim to holding your breath and going 60 feet down a line in the ocean? Okay, interesting— an ambitious woman!
Dr. Nathalie: Yeah and then after that, I’m good, I can surf now.
Maia: You’re not scared?
Dr. Nathalie: Bigger waves, I can hold the sets, and yeah…
Maia: No problem? It took care of that fear? [Yeah] So powerful, just to walk right into it and not not accept the not knowing. [Yes]Decide I’m gonna know!
Nathalie: Yes, I knew I really wanted to better in the water like because I was always surfing but if the wave was big I was not gonna take it because I didn’t know how the end was gonna be, like the wipe-out and all that stuff. And what if my leash breaks again and “Oh, no I have to figure it out now.” And after that, after the free diving course I was like, “Oh I can take bigger waves now and go down the line and whatever happens down there doesn’t matter.“
Maia: It’s gonna be just fine. [LAUGH].
Dr. Nathalie: Just be careful not to hit anybody and not hit yourself.
Maia: Stay away from that hard board. So interesting and this, at least in my mind, one of the things I’ve discovered about you that is related, at least in my mind is this capacity you have to realize you want to know something that you don’t know and just run right into it is that you have decided to continue your education. [Yes] Even though you’re already a medical doctor— what are you studying now?
Dr. Nathalie: Right now I’m doing a Master’s in nutrition and Public Health.
Maia: So, did you learn much about nutrition in medical school?
Dr. Nathalie: Not a single hour of nutrition. They don’t teach you anything about nutrition. They teach you, I mean they don’t teach you how to treat people with the diet, which is like pretty important. I realized from working here, if I had a patient and I was explaining him like the foods that she or he was able to eat, that I was not getting there. So, I… you know, I saw that as a challenge. I need to be able to explain this better or to teach them better or to help them. Also, you know because the same thing, we go through the same thing. If you have money to afford the medical consultation you won’t have money to go to a nutritionist or something like that, to help you with whatever plan for you to treat your diabetes or any other disease. So, I saw that happening a lot with my patients and I decided to do it for me also and to help my patients in that way a little bit more.
Maia: So exciting— and are you learning a lot that’s useful?
Dr. Nathalie: Yes, a lot.
Maia: It’s really interesting. I find it fascinating and disturbing that the professionals who are tasked with our health don’t learn about nutrition which seems foundational.
Dr. Nathalie: Now I’m doing it, I think it’s, yeah, the foundation of pretty much everything. You can avoid, you can treat, and you can reverse sometimes diseases with just the right diet and that’s all in nutrition. If you don’t have any of that knowledge it’s kinda hard, you’re just gonna prescribe medicines all the time and that’s it pretty much, you know? [Fascinating!] But the idea, my idea is to help people a little bit more in that area.
Maia: And, I am making this link in my mind but I don’t know if this is a link that has any integrity to it, but I heard you say earlier that I wasn’t taking care of myself nutritionally, surfing taught me that I needed to eat better and now you want to pass on to your patients. [Yes] Is it fair to to give surfing some of credit for the fact that you’re now to
Dr. Nathalie: Yes, all the credits actually
Maia: All the credit, you think?
Dr. Nathalie: Because once I realized I needed to be healthy and it was easy, actually. I was sick all the time and as you can see, I am like, not a very heavy person, but I was way skinnier before, I was always under weight. I’m like 5’8 and I was like 49-48 kilos, [way too light] my whole life. Way too much, because I was not sleeping good, I was not eating right… Maybe not eating right, but not eating what my body needed back then? And I was always with so much pain, I was sleeping 3 or 4 hours, you know like, the food, I realized after, I was very sensitive to a lot of food but I didn’t know until I decided to invest more time in nutrition and once I changed my whole diet and realized what foods are good for my body everything changed, you know? Like, I’m a happier person, I’m sleeping better, I put a lot of weight also, well, not a lot but now I’m like my normal, you know like, body index mass or whatever…
Maia: Yes, you look great you don’t look alarmingly thin. [LAUGH]
Dr. Nathalie: But I was like, it’s just everything, if you’re not eating right your whole body’s like not working right. Once I learned that, maybe from surfing, now I was this, now I wanted to teach it to, or pass it at least to my patients.
Maia: And the not sleeping, well was that, do you think related to nutrition, stress, all of it?
Dr. Nathalie: A little bit of everything. Nutrition, stress from work, then I was working too much and then I was too tired to surf and then I was not sleeping good, obviously, like 3-4 hours and then I was in a very bad mood the next day, “I’m not going to surf today, because I’m too tired.” So it was becoming like a cycle also and one day I decided like, I’m not going to eat meat this month
And I was feeling good but not 100% there yet.
I decided to stop eating chicken, the next month pork, and the next month dairy, and the next month eggs until I finally felt my body was… this is how I was supposed to feel! I never felt that way before. LAUGH Until I got to the point I knew what my body likes and needed. Yeah, and then I put a little bit more weight I was able to paddle more, surf more, I was catching more waves and was like, this is great!
Maia: So good!
Dr. N. : It was so amazing and then I never went back pretty much. It’s been like 3 years. Like, once I realized there’s like a group for pretty much every health problem and you, I mean you’re able to fix things. So I was thinking having this really bad insomnia, now I have to take pills and they were like strong pills but I still was not sleeping great. Once I changed my diet everything just disappeared. I was sleeping way better.
Maia; Is there anything else about surfing and the lifestyle that you’ve crafted for your self? It’s very ocean-centered, surfing as a priority in turn affects on your other priorities in ways that obviously deepen the ways that you’re able to serve this community. Is there anything that you would want people who don’t have this lifestyle, they don’t have the opportunity to just prioritized developing some kind of love of physical activity out in the natural world. What could you say to them? Is there anything you could tell them that you’ve learned from this king of lifestyle?
Dr. Nathalie: I think, it doesn’t matter the sport, you like or practice but I think that’s like the key, you know? Once you have a like a passion for everything, jujitsu, or surfing, or running, you’re gonna be focused on that and you want to be better in that and then you want to be healthy to keep doing that you want to eat right, you’re gonna stretch, I mean you want to do everything to make that sport right and you know it’s gonna make you feel. You know, whatever the sport you do, if you’re healthy, you’re happy, pretty much! That would be my advice.
Maia; Choose to be happy, choose to be healthy?
Dr. Nathalie: Yeah! You want to do all the right things for your body. To be able to realize whatever the activity you like that’s equal to happiness pretty much in my case. Once I surf in the morning I’m good for the rest of the day. That’s it!
Maia: I wonder you know I get to come here some portion of the year, and every day is so magical. The waves the spray, the rainbows of the spindrift, and the monkeys, iguanas, it’s just incredible. Are you still able to feel that this place is magical? [Um] Or does it just seem like, meh, another day in paradise.
Dr. Nathalie: No, no, yeah I mean we live in a small paradise, actually and I find myself very thankful to decide to move here. I was not very excited at the beginning but after it was like, yes, this is where I want to be and every day is the same there’s nothing besides surfing, you know, Pilates, yoga, there’s some activities but if you are not interested in any of those it can be like very boring for you but just walking on the beach can be very nice. It’s gonna help you to relax a little bit, doesn’t matter if you don’t surf, just like walking and seeing all the nature cross in front of you all the time the sunsets, the sunrises, everything’s do special. And every day’s so different, every sunset and sunrise and wave conditions every day is so different so that’s what makes this place so special.
Maia: OK, is there anything else you’d like to say about this life?
Dr. N. I think if you have the chance to get closer to the ocean that’s gonna be life changing. Maybe you’re not living the life you wanted or always expected to be, I think the ocean might help a little bit to decide here’s my priorities now and this is what I want to do. Which is what happened to me. I had some other plans before moving here and once I realized, Oh I think I like this better, I do my best to be in the ocean almost every day now. Maybe it’s not surfing, maybe it’s like fishing, spear fishing, maybe it’s just like swimming just like walking, whatever I think the ocean is like a very powerful force that is gonna help you to set down a little bit and help you decide what’s important in your life. I think that’s a good chance if you have it I think you can take a lot of advantage from it.
Maia: Wonderful!
I wish I had this opportunity to get closer to the ocean when I was little, I was like 25-26 but that’s still good.
Maia: It’s good.
Dr. Nathalie: I don’t regret it.
Maia: No well I didn’t learn until I was 40 and I do wish I had learned earlier but I’m so grateful that I did.
Dr. Nathalie:Yeah, me too. I wish sometimes the same and then I was 25-26, like Oh! tThat’s perfect! It doesn’t matter, I was just on time.
Maia: Right, well you’re such a beautiful, elegant surfer and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.
Dr. Nathalie: Oh, thank you for having me here.
Maia: Yeah, certainly, so fun! Thank you so much Dr. Nathalie.
Dr. Nathalie: You’re welcome, con mucho gusto!
Maia: To set up a free discovery call with Maia to talk about how she might benefit you, your group or organization, visit aavestowisdom.com.
Interview: Maureen McNamara
To listen to the interview, scroll to the Player at the bottom of the page.
"You're always evolving but at some point you have to discover your true essence, who you are. I’m Maureen and I'm a surfer and that's who I have always been.
And for most of us as older transitioners, who’ve been through what we've been through, we don't want to see younger kids struggle the way we did. We want to allow the younger trans population to experience themselves early. But for most of us older transitioners, it’s, you reach a point where it's transition or die."
~ Maureen McNamara
Show Notes
Maureen McNamara’s article about being a trans surfer in The Inertia
One of Maureen’s surf style heroes: Leah Dawson
The first mainstream surf documentary: The Endless Summer
A brief article in The Inertia putting The Endless Summer in historical context
Resources for transgender youth
A Few of Maureen's Photos
Interview Transcript
INTRODUCTION
My name is Maia Dery.
The Waves to Wisdom interviews are the result of an exploration into a world I discovered when I learned to surf at mid-life.
Some of these conversations aren’t necessarily with people who we would instantly recognize as leaders but they are all leading us in a direction I instinctively followed and have benefitted tremendously in the process. Some of them don’t have huge audiences, but they are living very large lives.
To me, these people all seem to have wisdom practices centered in their relationship to the more-than-human world, to what we usually think of as “nature.”
Surfing proved first revelatory, then revolutionary in my life. I thought I was creative, thought I knew and loved water, thought I took care of my body. But when I entered the world of surfing and waves, when I started to ritualistically return to a literal edge, I realized my vision for my life had been hampered by some artificial barriers.
Slowly, with each wave and wipeout, those barriers in my brain, heart, and body began to dissolve.
I began to wonder, what if we all had a nature based practice that cracked us open? Made us more creative? Allowed us to reliably let go with the abandon of play? Of unbridled joy? What if we all practiced vulnerability, risk and failure on a daily basis and they were fun? Wouldn’t it make our lives better? Wouldn’t it lead us to the places it feels like, in this moment of planetary peril, we need to go?
Whether you find full bodied and big hearted connection through waves or walking or digging in the dirt, I hope you find these conversations useful in your own journey of re-inhabiting your life with renewed joy, deep engagement, and increasing wisdom.
Maureen McNamara:
You’re always evolving but at some point you have to discover your true essence, who you are. I’m Maureen and I’m a surfer and that’s who I have always been.
And for most of us as older transitioners, who’ve been through what we’ve been through, we don’t want to see younger kids struggle the way we did. We want to allow the younger trans population to experience themselves early. But for most of us older transitioners, it’s, you reach a point where it’s transition or die.
Maia: Surfer, photographer, and healthcare worker Maureen McNamara and I spent a couple of very chilly days exploring the rocky, intricate, beautiful Maine coastline. Everything my body was experiencing from the winter wetsuit to the big fat white snowflakes falling in the dark water, grayed by a heavy clouded sky, all of this was a total nonsequitor to what my calendar said, that we were well into the spring of the year. As strange and alien as these days felt to me Maureen was in intimately familiar territory. Every time we drove around a cove and she told me what to expect, I was struck by how her exhaustive knowledge of the place was both product and producer of her nearly lifelong surfing practice. As is the case with so many of us who are dependent on activity in the more than human world, Maureen credits her surfing habit with saving her life. What I find unique and inspiring was the role surfing plays and continues to play as she recounts the story of how, midway through the journey of our life, Maureen found the strength and courage to finally confront the fear that had kept her from honoring her fundamental nature.
Welcome to Waves to Wisdom.
Maia: We usually start— if you tell us your name your age and how long you been surfing
Mo: Well my name is Maureen McNamara my nickname is Mo people call me either Maureen or Mo. What was the other question? Ah, my age 60 and I’ve been surfing for 45 years now.
Maia: 45 years, ok and we just had really quite a spectacular surf. Will you talk a little bit about where we are and what we just did?
Mo: Well this is Gooch’s beach in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Maia: And it’s, it’s early May and snowing. Actually, I think it just stopped snowing but it’s it’s not warm.
Mo: Well as I said a few minutes ago it’s a little bit colder than normal this time year but it’s not unheard of to have this sort of weather in May in Maine.
Maia: Michael Coleman, who was the subject of a podcast, recommended that I interview you. And he thought that you were a particularly inspiring and courageous surfer. Will you tell us a little about your background?
Mo: Well I started surfing in 1974. We used to vacation in Ogunquit. My family would rent a cottage right on the Ogunquit River and we paddled across or walk across at low tide to the beach and go surfing every day, all day. And mostly it was at summers at first because at the time we are living in Washington, DC. My dad was stationed at the Pentagon. And we move back into this area when my dad retired and that’s when I started surfing year-round. It’s quite a bit different in the off-season as opposed to the summer season. The surf is much better but it’s also very cold as you discovered today.
Maia: Yes! Talk a little bit about your relationship with your surfboards
Mo: Well, I told you yesterday how I had this instant reaction after seeing The Endless Summer which is what got me wanting to surf when I was very young— probably seven or eight years old, I can’t remember exactly. And it was a similar, similar situation with shaping surfboards. I surfed that first year, that summer of ’74, and I just got it into my head all through the winter reading Surfer Magazine, Surfing Magazine were the two big magazines at the time. I just, I don’t know what it was, I just had to make a board. I wanted to make my own board.
And so the next summer we came back, in ’75 and I convinced the local surf shop owner to order me a blank and some resin and supplies. He thought I was crazy because nobody did that around here. And I bought a little book that detailed the process from start to finish. And I went out into the garage, and I built my first surfboard. Dripped resin all over the floor, which is probably still there on the rented cottage that we were at, had a blue tint. I made all sorts of mistakes with the glassing but the shape came out pretty nice and I been making my boards ever since. It was just something I was drawn to. I guess, in a way I’ve always been independent and I like to do things myself even though I stumble and bumble my way through it. I like to do things independently and learn things. I take the hard way, the long way but I think it’s part of the process of learning, you know, something new that attracts me.
Maia: Yes, anybody who surfs year-round in Maine clearly is familiar with the hard way.
Mo: I had a natural eye for shaping. There’s so much technical detail that goes into it and it took me a long time, a lot of trial and error. Back before the internet we can have all the information that you have now. And once information became available on the internet, probably 20 years ago, I discovered all the mistakes I’d been making and how to correct them. Which was another part of the learning process. And now I’m pretty happy with the way my boards turn out. And I know what works, especially in this area. I know what works and what doesn’t and I have very strong opinions about it at this stage of my life. I, you know, will often kind of cringe when I see the boards people are riding because to my opinion they’re not really suited to the conditions and/or the ability levels of a lot of the surfers that I see.
Maia: Interesting, so it’s a different kind of local knowledge then that goes with the technical know-how.
Mo: Yeah, you know, we went through real stagnant period in the 90s where everybody was trying to ride the same boards Kelly Slater was riding. And it didn’t work for most surfers because 99.9% of the surfers are not Kelly Slater or anything approaching his ability. People were riding wrong boards— too short, too thin, too narrow. And now it’s it’s kind of cool to be a surfboard, designer, shaper, builder because we’re back into that free expression, experimental mode which coming right out of the longboard era and into the short board revolution, there was a lot of experimentation and for some reason people got away from that, mostly when competition surfing came in in the mid-70s late 70s.
And then it all became contest oriented and everybody’s trying to build boards for contest surfing and surf in that contest way and I never was aligned with that. For me surfing is not about competition.
Maia: Okay, so the driving hypothesis of these interviews is my experience that, for a certain subset of surfers, that surfing helps us make sense of our lives that it really grounds us and gives us a kind of a reason for being, helps us make sense of adversity and challenges, and the difficulties that come into life. Do you think I’m on to something? Is that a reasonable hypothesis?
Mo: Definitely, definitely. I listened to your interview with Mike last night and I was moved by it in certain places. It was nice memories of an old friend that I’d lost touch with but also some of the things that you talked about with him and his wife resonated and definitely you are onto something because I’ve always felt that way.
I think I mentioned to you yesterday how I grew up in an environment, in a family who kind of trivialized surfing and my involvement with it. Surfing can be whatever you want to be. It can be as little or as much as you want it to be. For me like I said I had that visceral connection with that the first time I saw The Endless Summer when I was 7-8 years old. I knew, I looked at the screen I said “I have to do that! I have to do that!” and it took me a few more years before I was able to buy my own board ‘ cause my parents certainly weren’t going to buy boards for us. And everything I did met resistance at every step of the way. And to me it was just so powerful connection that I had with the the ocean, the sensations of riding a wave, everything encompassing it, that I knew I was I was onto something and I think surfing— you live in the moment with surfing. And you have to. I mean we were just out there now and you caught a wave right off and it was, you know, kind of not a death-defying wave. It was kind of a mellow wave and you had a nice introduction to The Bunk and Maine surfing. And then a little bit later a set came in and caught both of us and we took few waves on the head…
Maia: A few very cold waves…
Mo: And that’s what surfing is you know? It will humble you. It will excite you. It’ll invigorate you. It will rejuvenate you. But sometimes you get to get a few waves on the head and you get very cold and you get tumbled under water. It, it gives you a connection to, not only the natural world, but I think our spiritual, soulful world that too many of us try and t disconnect from, I think. We spent a lot of time pursuing things that aren’t really important.
You know, I work in a nursing facility as a nursing assistant and dealing with people who are you know, at end-of-life and they have lots of regrets and things that they wish they had done. And I always felt like, why do we spend our time pursuing things that aren’t really that important? If you want to do things get out there and do them, it doesn’t have to be surfing. There’s many other things that you can do but I’m always a firm believer in pursuing once passions. First find a passion and then pursue it, you know?
I was telling my wife Jess last night that, it’s a different way of life. All the surfers I know, they structure their whole life, their whole day around prospects for surf or if there is surf they’re going surfing. And it’s not that they’re all a bunch of lazy dropouts. But they’ve structured their life so they have time every day to go paddle out and catch a wave or two and experience everything that surfing has to offer. Surfers, you go by the rhythm of the tides and winds and it gives you that tune into the natural, the natural order of things rather than the human, man-made order..
Maia: It’s one of things that I love most about surfing is that the ocean is always in charge, in charge of your schedule, in charge of what kind of time you have, and how many rides you get, all of it.
Mo: Yeah, I, you know, I mentioned yesterday about how I feel in our culture, our Western culture specifically, that we’ve gotten away— We have roots in that much like Eastern cultures or, you know, indigenous cultures of North America, South America, Australia. And for some reason in Western culture we seem to have disconnected and gotten away from that, even though we have roots there as well, as all peoples do I think.
Maia: You talked a little bit about your Celtic and [yeah] Scandinavian heritage?
Mo: Well it, you know, I’m part Irish, part Swedish and, you know just knowing the little bit that I do about my my heritage, my ancestry, I know that there’s that same connection to the land, the earth, the sea, the air and I’m shivering and hyperventilating a little bit right now because I’m still chilly but, yeah, we have a connection that we try and divorce ourselves from it. And we insulate ourselves in buildings and in cars that have heat and, you know, we don’t experience being out in the Maine water when it’s 40° water and 40° air and it’s, it’s cold and windy. And is that really the essence of what what our lives are supposed to be? You know, it’s an insulation and it’s, it’s not real. And, you know, I struggled a long time with people telling me that surfing wasn’t real and I’m like “It doesn’t get any more real than that!” And that’s the essence I think, that’s always been the essence to me.
Maia: It’s one of the things I love the most about surfing is that all biological life in some ways is a collaboration with water. Life doesn’t work without water as its fundamental material and we, most of the time in this culture don’t think about that. But when you’re surfing you are in a conscious collaboration with water and water is always in charge [yes] and I love the way it, it reminds me, helps me remember, as opposed to feeling dismembered, helps me remember how much my life is, is literally this continuation of other lives. I am part of the stream of life and of water that just keeps cycling around. It really is a powerful, it’s a powerful metaphor and fact at the same time.
Mo: Yeah, you know I can remember days surfing in the middle the winter and I look at the bluffs and the snow on the bluffs and snow pellets coming down and it’s cold, and it’s windy, and you’re out there. Maybe you’re out there on on a solo session and I’m like I’m living an experience that most people will never experience and how tragic is that? That they don’t they don’t get this essence of our connection to our natural world and in this case specifically the ocean. We have this experience called life and we’re here for a very short time. Working in the, in the the healthcare field that I do it’s driven home every every shift I pull— how limited and how precious our time is. I just turned 60 years old this year and I look back and my life was an eye blink. And I’m, I’m closer to the end than I am to the beginning and I feel blessed to have had surfing as a passion because I think it’s taught me so much. It’s given me that spiritual, soulful connection to what the life experience is. I’m not rich. I’m not… I haven’t traveled much like a lot of my surfing friends will travel to surf. I haven’t had the fortune to do that.
I used to lament and become very depressed that I would watch all my friends going off to exotic locations: Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Australia, Sri Lanka all these places all around the world which has always been some of my dream. But I haven’t had the opportunity for various reasons and yet I am intimately connected to this little corner of the world. I know every grain of sand and rock and pebble and turn of the coastline and, you know, in this area from Fortune’s Rock to Hampton Beach down in New Hampshire and this is my little corner of the universe and I know it as well as a Perry Winkle crawling around a tide pool knows that a little tide pool and it may be a very small little tide pool but in that small little world there’s still so much to see.
Maia: So much! Especially in this area, there’s so much variety in the coast here.
Mo: Yeah and it’s constantly changing, that’s another aspect of it. You know what you see now is not what you see in February. Yes, it was cold today but there’s a whole another level of cold that, you know [that I have no desire to experience] is not apparent today. I told you about surfing on a day one the water was 36° and the air was down to single digits and the windchill was in negative numbers. And I sat there watching it and the waves were just flawless at the River Mouth, my home break. And I watched for about an hour and I kept thinking how cold it was and I would be out by myself. And then I finally had to say, “You have to go out I mean you have to experience that experience of being in that cold, of being alone out there!”
And I did, I paddled out. By the time I got out there was a couple other surfers suiting up to go out so I wasn’t completely alone. But for the first wave I caught I was by myself. And I just had this flawless wave that went on for about 2 or 300 yards, it just kept going and I had that experience. And I only caught three waves and every one of them was, you know, one of the best three waves of my life. I don’t know I’ve lived with cold my whole life, I think that maybe there’s something in my DNA being Irish, Swedish, Scandinavian that maybe it’s in my blood, maybe the cold is in my blood? The only time I ever spent time in a warmer place I lived in Florida for a short time and had the worst sunburns of my life down there and I’m like, “This isn’t much fun!” And Florida is like loaded with sharks and I’m not fond of sharks that’s a little secret by the way.
As much as I’m connected and love the ocean— I didn’t tell you this yet— I’m scared to death of the ocean. I struggled down on Nantucket because there’s white sharks around there because there’s a huge seal population. I did not like surfing alone there. I do surf alone here. But I also had a near drowning experience back in the 80s down in New Hampshire on a big winter day and those two things really reinforced my fear of the ocean and I’m not always comfortable in either solo sessions or bigger sessions because of those two experiences. But I still force myself out there.
Maia: I really understand that. I’m a pretty fearful person by nature and one of the things that I love that surfing does for me is, is force me to face my fears just about every single wave I take off on.
Mo: Yeah it’s, you know, this other aspect of my life— I don’t know if you want to get into that but [absolutely] if— I always tell people if I could sum up my life with a single word it would be…
Maia: You are writing in the steamed up window “fear”
Mo: I lived for 50 years in fear and I let it rule my life. And in some ways I could say that I, I’ve missed out a lot on what my life could have and should have been. Looking back now I wouldn’t change any of it because that was the experience I was meant to live.
But fear can paralyze you. You know they always talk about when animals, including humans, are confronted with a dangerous situation it’s the fight or flight scenario. You either fight or you run. But there’s a third one that they don’t always talk about and that’s, you become paralyzed. I did that for 50 years of my life. And in a lot of ways even with surfing I have done that. I got into photography originally because I was supposed to go on surf trip, my first surf trip to Barbados with my brothers and some friends and one by one they all bailed. And rather than go by myself because I was fearful of going by myself on a surf trip to an unknown place, I used the money that I’d saved and bought some camera equipment and that’s what started me on photography [interesting]. And as a consequence I never went to Barbados and I never went anywhere else of any real surfing consequence but you know that was an aspect of fear that I dealt with.
Maia: You take some awesome pictures!
Mo: I try.
Maia: Do you want to talk about down why it was that he lived in fear for 50 years
Maureen: Yeah I’m, I’m transgender and I lived for the first 50 years in another mode, so to speak, which wasn’t me, was not my true self. And I lived for 25 years in a marriage that was doomed from the start. I got married at that time, I was 22-23 years old, I was 22 and turned 23 a couple of weeks later, because I thought it was what I was supposed to do and again it’s that conformity, that pressure to to live the life that everybody expects you to live. So I got married and had children we had three kids. I went through the whole suburban life I continued to surf which really probably saved my life because from a very early age— probably, you know, around the same time I saw the Endless Summer at seven or eight years old— I couldn’t really put a finger on what was wrong with me but I knew something was wrong, something wasn’t right. And you know I developed various passions to distract myself, to not deal with it because of that fear.
What if people find out? What will my family say? What, you know, what will people do? Back then it was very difficult.
Talking to a lot of my trans friends now, a lot of them went through some horrific experiences. I have one friend who was even put in an insane asylum for a time. [wow] And, you know, people were beaten, murdered, certainly made fun of. There’s a very high suicide rate and that’s what I lived with on a daily basis from the time I was not even 10 years old, I dealt with that. These feelings of “I just want to end it,” you know? “This is horrible, I just don’t want to live anymore.” And I dealt with that right up until I was out of that first marriage and I finally confronted myself, came out to myself so to speak. I had known it all along and I finally, you know, later on in my teens I discovered what and who I was but didn’t want to face it so hid it, was completely closeted and the only thing that kept me going were my two passions: surfing and writing.
And when my marriage fell apart I started doing some research on the internet, again the internet comes to the rescue, and I confronted myself and I was in therapy already seeing a family counselor and I came out to her. She was the first person I came out to and I got all cotton-mouthed and, you know, she was the first person in 50 years of my life, well I was maybe 48 at the time, that I’d mentioned this aspect of myself and the thing I discovered when I came out to her was a bolt of lightning didn’t come down to strike me dead on the spot. The world did not end, my existence did not end.
And she referred me to a gender therapist which is part of the protocols, the standards of care that’s required to transition. And you have to go to therapy then you have to get a referral from the therapist to get hormones. And then you have to live for at least a year before you can get a referral from not only that therapist but a second therapist, one of them has to be PhD therapist to get a referral for surgery. And once that the egg was broken and I emerged from the shell, I still had a long way to go before I became the full chicken, so to speak, to follow that metaphor, I’m famous for mixing my metaphors but I figured I’d stick with that one.
But yeah so, without surfing I don’t think I would be here. I used to wake up every single day, “What am I getting up for today? Why am I living today? Oh, I gotta coach soccer practice. The kids are counting on me. I gotta go. Okay so I won’t kill myself today.”
And this was a daily occurrence I would spend you know a 1/2 an hour, hour in bed just trying to will myself to get out of bed— this is more towards the end of my first marriage. I think maybe there was some residual guilt and shame that I was brought up in a Catholic household and even though I didn’t follow the church anymore they put that stuff in your head from birth and it’s a brainwashing of sorts in my opinion. I bought into it all when I was young and then I saw the hypocrisies inherent in what was being said what was actually being practiced by too many. And so I turned away from it but I still I think it was that residual fear that or maybe I will go to help, you know? Surfing kept me going and mostly it was a distraction. When I was in the water, like I said, you’re in the moment. You don’t have time for anything else. You have to be present in that moment and put everything else out of your mind and that’s, that’s what got me through and I would just get away and distract myself and it was a constant struggle to distract myself from the the inner self that was trying to emerge.
And I had an epiphany coming home from a good surf session. I actually wrote an article about it in, an essay about it in The Inertia, which is a surfing webzine. I used to have these feelings in my head that “I need to be a girl. I need to be a girl.” And I was out the water one day and I caught this amazing wave and I paddled back to the line-up and I sat there waiting for the next set and I’m like “See that’s all I need! I don’t need to be a girl. That’s all I need in life is just to catch one of those waves every once in awhile and that’s good enough for me!” And as I was driving home that day it suddenly occurred to me. I came over the crest of the hill and the sun was coming in my face the sun was setting and I’m like, wait a minute… if in that moment of ultimate euphoria and glorious, you know, adrenaline rush from that one wave you’re still having that thought in your head then that’s not all you need .
Maia: It’s a powerful thought if it’s intruding into your surfing bliss.
Mo: At the highest moment [absolutely] it was still there. And so I knew right then. It was still a few more years after that before I finally got past the fear and it was hard. You know, one of the things my therapist told me early on, “You have to be prepared to lose everything.” and I was like “Oh Yeah,” and she says, “No, I mean everything.”
And at the time she said it didn’t really resonate with me but over, over the years during and after transition it’s like yeah I lost everything. But like somebody who’s depressed and I was clinically depressed and suicidally depressed, a lot of times when you’re depressed to that level it’s almost like a cloak of comfort that you can pull around yourself and like “Okay I’m just gonna sit here in my depression and that’s what I feel comfortable with and it’s my old soft shoe and even though I hate it and it smells and it’s uncomfortable it’s still comfortable at the same time and that’s what you live with and you’re afraid, once again fear, to to give that up because you don’t know what you’re giving it up for— an unknown. And what I discovered was that everything I gave up was hard. I lost my family, I lost my home. I lost two homes ultimately because after the divorce I got a cash settlement on our home and I used that both to fund my transition and also to purchase a very small little bungalow which ultimately I lost to water damage and foreclosure but I lost my sense of place in the community, estranged from my family— lost everything but after all that loss I gained myself and the interesting thing about that Is like so what is myself and a lot of my trans friends they told me that at you know you’re going to give up a lot of those things that you used to think were so important. Then they would tell me “Oh you’re not going to need to surf anymore and you will, surfing was your compensation to get you through the pain and the torment.” I’m like “Damn I don’t want to give up surfing!”
And what I discovered the true essence of me, Maureen is I am a surfer and I didn’t give that up because that from the get-go was part of who I truly am and surfing was a powerful influence. It was as powerful as this inner torment that I had in the later revelation of who my true self is. And I was so grateful for that because I am passionate and I love surfing and I was afraid to give it up and then I discovered I don’t have to. It is who I am and once it’s in your blood I don’t think It goes out, I mean it’s like the ocean that our blood is connected to it’s you either you have or you don’t like I meet a lot of people who surf who aren’t really what I would call surfers—
Maia: It doesn’t play the same role.
Mo: No, and that’s okay it’s just for me I discovered part of me, who Maureen is is I’m a surfer. And I remember many many years ago arguing with my father about that and him saying, “Why do you have to be a surfer? Why can’t you just be somebody who surfs?” And I’m like, “No I’m a surfer. That’s part of my…” and I actually said the words. “That’s part of my identity.” And he laughed and he pooh-poohed that and he ridiculed that which was very hurtful. And now you know I’ve discovered that there’s nothing trivial about surfing.
Maia: So wonderful, do you know the character from Greek Mythology Tiresias?
Mo: Not to familiar with that one.
Maia: Tiresias was both a man and a woman … Well, Zeus and Hera had a bet and they asked Tiresias “Who enjoys the sex act more, a man or a woman?” and then the story goes on from there but it’s so interesting to me is that you have experienced this powerful set of sensations which to many surfers’ minds is just as powerful as sexuality. You’ve experienced it as both a man and a woman and I don’t know anybody else who has. And I wonder is when is there a difference? Did people treat you differently? Was your relationship with the ocean different?
Mo: The one, the one caveat to to any answer I would provide is I didn’t really experience it as a man.
Maia: You were always a woman on the inside…
Mo: Right and that’s the thing that a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around but…
Maia: But nobody else in the water knew that for a long time.
Mo: No and I kept… and I was I was recently talking to one of my female surfing friends which I, after after transition I, I developed more of a relationship with the female locals and she confided to me that I was a real asshole out in the water and because I was so hyper aggressive in going after every wave and you know I intimidated a lot of people and I’m like, I never felt like that. Is that what I was projecting and how horrible is that and that’s not what I felt inside but I guess that’s how It manifested. And it makes sense because the relationship I have with my kids especially. I was not a very fun person to be around. And that’s to put it mildly. I was angry and depressed and, you know, I took out some of my anger on them, mostly in a verbal way I mean, I was never physically abusive or anything like that I but I was verbally abusive. I grew up in a verbally and emotionally abusive family. That’s, that’s the model I had and I’m not using that as an excuse. It’s just that’s what I knew and I guess I projected that when I became a parent myself. But that was one of the things that was shed as I transitioned. And I was very fearful, again fear, “How’s my surfing community going to react to all of this?” And almost to a person, they were all cool with it, you know? They were like, “As long as you still surf and that’s all that matters.”
Maia: Isn’t that interesting!
Mo: You know, and there was a couple of knuckleheads who would— You know I had a situation where one of the local knuckleheads, and I never really cared for the guy much anyway but he ran me over in the surf one day. And then he gave this really rather insincere apology and he called me by my old name and I corrected him and he says “Yeah, whatever. “ And I’m like “You SOB, no, not whatever. Respect who I am or get out of my face.” and I just paddled away and I haven’t spoken to him ever since. But you know with with that in a couple of other exceptions I haven’t had any issues with people I used to know before and most of them have been very supportive and, you know, people say I’m a nicer person out in the water. And you know it’s funny because I didn’t really feel that I was being the way I guess I was. But I’m less competitive and satisfied with less and I give more waves and I catch myself and I don’t know If that’s inherently a female thing but
Maia: It’s inherently a generous thing.
Mo: Yeah, and I think the empathetic side of myself and you know the more generous side of myself was able to come out. I work taking care of primarily elderly but other people who’re maybe there are quite a few my age or even younger who have physical and mental issues I take care of in I learned that I have a very compassionate aspect of myself and I’m very good at what I do and I think it’s because I suffered a lot of pain in my life I’m able to provide them that compassion and that empathy for what they’re going through.
And all these things that were repressed before have come out and that’s who I am and that’s Maureen. And, you know, out in the water… It’s, I tried for two waves today and I blew both of them but it doesn’t matter. I was out the water I was engaged. The memories that I’ll take away from today’s session is, number one the wave that you caught and I was like “Yes! She caught a wave! So now she knows what it’s like the surf in Maine. And this image that is still in my head of the cleanup set that came. And the first wave you turned turtle on and you got the board pulled away and then all I could See was your head sticking up as the second wave came in and watching You trying to duck under it before I had to duck under myself and because I was knocked off my board as well and that was kinda like the essence of it. You catch a wave and then you get hammered by a wave you know, it’s snowing now but who knows the sun might come out later you know? You just deal with it, you roll with it and flow with it. Anyway I’m kind of rambling.
Maia: No, it’s wonderful. Really I love the… when I asked you that the question about Tiresias [Right] I asked you you know you’ve experienced surfing as both a man and woman and you generously corrected me and said you know I was always women and the thing that I will now take away from today as is this, just the power of of authenticity. The power of recognizing that there are, even though we all change over time and and that everybody’s self is a moving target. It’s a shifting and evolving thing but that really there are some aspects of ourselves that even that are so crucial to honor and that when you honor that whatever that authenticity is that’s trying to express itself it really does allow you to to be a better version of yourself in all these other ways [yeah] you have more to give and I’m so grateful that surfing help to you in in some ways keep an eye on who you were in a in an nonthinking moment to moment way…
Mo: Yes it’s, you know once I went through this process I thought back on some of the lessons of surfing and it teaches you patience. And in a way I had to be patient enough to go through what I needed to go through before I was ready. A lot of trans people will say, you know because we get asked questions that are very insensitive sometimes. I had a dentist, dental hygienist that I used to see every six months and for couple years every six months I would have an appointment with her and she knew me before and she knew me during and after. And she always asked this one question. We’d talk about this that and the other things, she liked soccer so she asked me about soccer But at some point she’d pause and I’m like “Oh boy here it comes.”
She was like, “Do you ever have any regrets about transitioning and I would always know the first time she said it I always give her kind of a flippant answer is “the only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.” And after giving her the same answer over and over and over It became kind of annoying I finally stopped going to let doctors but that’s what a lot of trans people say is the only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. You know how much of life did I miss out on but then I also have the feeling was… that I needed to go through what I needed to go through before I was ready. Part of this process of my transition, part of this process of my surfing connection is, you’re always evolving but at some point you have to discover your true essence, who you are. I’m Maureen and I’m a surfer and that’s who I have always been.
And for most of us as older transitioners, who’ve been through what we’ve been through, we don’t want to see younger kids struggle the way we did. We want to allow the younger trans population to experience themselves early and not live through the traumas that we live through. But for most of us older transitioners, it’s, you reach a point where it’s transition or die. You literally come to that decision I’m either going to do this or I’m gonna kill myself because I cannot live this way anymore.
Which is interesting to me I alluded to a near drowning I had years ago. I was under the water getting tumbled around and held under to limited my breath and my mantra used to be when I was held under the water “Relax, relax, relax, it’ll let go of you. If you relax you’ll conserve your oxygen. Relax!”
And I went through all that process and the wave wasn’t letting go. And I’m like okay this is not like it usually is . And I had bounced off the bottom and everything else. And I was so disoriented I didn’t know which way was up. When the wave finally dissipated and there was like a neutral buoyancy, almost at panic stage, so I said I gotta start swimming I swim literally into the bottom because I was so disoriented I know which way was up. So I did a somersault under water, pushed off the bottom of my feet started swimming the surface but at this point I was almost gone.
And I made a conscious decision, just like transition or die. I will take a breath and if it’s water I die. If it’s air, I live. And just as I opened my mouth for air my head broke the surface and I went GASP, the next wave hit me and I was under the water again so I got like half a breath. If it hadn’t been for that half, half a breath I don’t think I would’ve come up because I got that one little half a breath, little gulp that sustained me again as I tumbled again and when I came up I had the whole tunnel vision, seeing stars and everything else. My board was still attached by the leash I pulled myself on the board and I forced myself to paddle out instead of into the beach, which is really what I wanted to do.
And I sat out there for like two more hours too afraid, again fear,— afraid to catch a wave and the sun started going down. One by one all the surfers left the water. It was a huge huge day— probably 15 to 20 feet on the faces. I was ill-equipped with the wrong board. I should’ve known better but I was too full of myself as a surfer at that stage. I thought was nothing on the East Coast that can hurt me. I was wrong very wrong.
But that’s how my day had begun full of you know dumb ignorant pride thinking I had reached the pinnacle of my surfing experience. And I drove away that day thinking “I am nothing. I am humbled. I am— I don’t matter.”
Maia: It’s it’s really interesting to me how a lot of people hear something like that that kind of thought “we’re nothing” and I think it’s it’s an unpleasant thought but but is it can be immensely freeing.
Mo: Yes! And it took me a long time to to learn that. At the time I felt nothing but humility and just you know fear. You know I’ve never considered a myself super radical, vertical surfer, vertical airs are the big thing now with performance surfing and I’m more of a horizontal surfer. I want to sustain and I don’t know I bring it back to sexuality, maybe that’s a female thing you know where women prefer to keep things going a note here is not that it..
Maia: Maybe it is! Thats a good observation!
Mo: Not that slam, bam, thank you ma’am. [Maybe it is, oh that’s so interesting.] Well I can’t help but think that way, that’s the way my mind works but it’s like, I’m in it for the long ride not for the big impact.
But I dunno, surfing its is the coolest thing that anybody can experience it’s about the size of it.
Maia: That’s about the size of it, yes I think for it really is beautiful surfers have this intimate connection with this very dynamic medium, natural medium and surfing is not the right thing for everybody but I do think that surfers are a model for a way that connection to the more than human world can really enhance your life and and help, help guide it.
Mo: I was telling Jess last night as I was reflecting on the day we spent yesterday together and then now anticipating this interview that for so long I lived in that fear that I talked about and people trying to get all of us to conform like there’s some prescription for a way of life, a way to live a life and that and never sat with me. It was like why? Why do we do this? Why do we live the way that we live? We weren’t meant to sit on our butts in front of a computer monitor disconnected from people. I mean, I worked at one cubicle job where we were not allowed to even speak to our coworkers. Whose idea of a way of life is that to disconnect from each other?
You know, one of the aspects I haven’t touched on that I think is a huge thing in surfing, it’s not merely about the waves you catch, it’s about the people you meet. There’s a whole vibrant surf community
Maia: Oh my gosh, it’s so wonderful here too! You, because you’re pretty much exclusive to Maine, you wouldn’t know this but I walked into the local surf shop here Black Point and that they were so good to me and that is not always the case with middle-aged gray-haired ladies when you walk into a surf shop.
Mo: Yeah and I think especially from the female perspective and I, I was guilty of it before. you asked about that aspect of before and after. I will say and I think it’s true to some extent but not so much anymore because there’s more women out there in the water. But I was guilty of it myself of looking literally right through women out in the water. you know you saw a woman out there it’s like PFFT, you know “Yeah okay I can take off in her she doesn’t know what she going to do? Um cry?”
And there’s still the knuckleheads out there that will do that. I now have people look right through me. “Oh who’s that old fat broad on the longboard. I can take off on her.” and it’s frustrating.
You don’t only surf in the water, I’ve got Achilles tendinitis currently have had five knee surgeries, both of my shoulders have been scoped and I will tell you that estrogen is not a performance-enhancing drug.
Maia: I have heard this
Mo: I have lost a lot of the ability and strength, yeah. And I’ve had to adapt and I’m still struggling with it. I’m getting older but it’s still my passion and I still am trying to find ways to make it work.
Maia: I don’t know if this is relevant to any of what you’re going through but but I have noticed that to the extent that I engage with the mainstream surf media which is very limited that there is this sort of assumed a hierarchy of capacity or achievement that is extremely male in its focus. They’re interested in what men’s bodies at their most adept and most gifted do but you know for me coming into surfing late one of the things that that really drew me in was how beautiful female long boarders are. I mean, for me, that’s the pinnacle of surfing achievement.
Mo: I am very much impressed and very much heartened by the greater influx of female surfers because I do think that they bring a certain aesthetic and aspect to surfing that has been missing for a long time with this focus on this contest driven hyper, you know, agro big, bold, dynamic moves in, which is all well and good but I take pictures and and I watch surfers and and I sometimes tell ‘em take what’s offered. That’s that’s up an ethos that is lost in this day and age it take what the wave gives you don’t try to impose your your repertoire on every single wave you see you’re not the star. You’re that little insignificant speck. The wave is the star, complement the wave, okay? Don’t worry about completing yourself dance with the wave, complement the wave anyway that’s where I come from.
Maia: It’s a beautiful place and head to. Thank you so much for this, Maureen.
Mo: Well thank you and I, I apologize again for going on and on when you get me started
Maia: I’m so glad I got you started very generous!
Maia: I hope you learned as much from Maureen’s powerful story as I did. To set up a time to talk about coaching, a custom retreat, or an in-house event to inspire and energize your organization or group visit wavestowisdom.com
Sharks, painting, and patience
Joanna Frye, Untitled, 2017, Acrylic on Canvas
Sharks, Painting, and Patience
In our interview, artist and frequent ocean buddy Joanna Frye and I discussed the release from creative responsibility that comes with surfing. She said that when she surfed it felt like she was being painted instead of doing the painting. There is still plenty of creating going on when you surf or play in the ocean, it’s just not all coming out of your own limited human imagination and skillset. It’s not all dependent on your work. For those moments in the waves, you can’t even begin to lie to yourself about being in control of life, about dominating the world, or forcing an outcome. But you do, eventually, achieve some sense of control of your relationship to yourself and the uncontrollable.
Playfully, creatively tapping into a wider, deeper and, if you prefer, higher power is a practice that can, over time, change your mind and could do so, some neuroscientists think, by measurably changing your brain.
The research about the plasticity of our brains is thrilling but I don’t need a neuroscientist to tell me this: to catch a wave requires presence and acceptance: you can’t hurry things, or waste time thinking about the past or the future, or wish they were easier or more interesting. There just isn’t time for that. Not if you want to be there for that ride, to feel the rush and lift, and respond in whatever way your own body will allow, to be with that force for a delicious instant, to feel the joy of being on a planet with gravity instead of putting your creative energy into the futile task of working to somehow defy it.
One of the 20th Century philosophers I think is worth wrestling with is Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He wrote that “[t]rue philosophy consists of re-learning to look at the world.” It’s a pretty inclusive definition and seems to include those of us who are honest and brave enough to know that we need to revise our vision as we, our insights, and the world change. Merleau-Ponty’s work focused on that instant of perception, a sliver of time before our scientific, categorical mind can take over and begin to catalog, dismiss, prioritize, and judge. He thought this moment of perception was the beginning of all creativity, all art.
He wrote that “it is the expressive operation begun in the least perception, which amplifies into painting and art.” He also thought painters were uniquely well suited “amplifiers.”
Carolyne Quinn wrote a wonderful, accessible article about Merleau-Ponty’s work on perception and painting. Quinn writes that, for Merleau-Ponty “meaning is not found pre-existent in the world but is called into existence by the body’s own activity in the world.”
Merleau-Ponty’s work is more popular since his death than during his life because, as it turns out, his writing is more relevant to what we’re learning about our brains now than what we knew about them then. Think about it. If he’s even a little right, and we are dependent on our sensing bodies to help create meaning, what are our hyper-stimulated, scanning, swiping, fractured, and busy days doing, not just to our bodies, but to the meaning we call into existence in the world.
Quinn describes one of Merleau-Ponty’s most inspiring ideas, something called “reversibility.” Merleau-Ponty thought our body is both an entity that senses and an entity being sensed, and not just in the way your body is busy seeing and being seen by other partially dressed humanoids on the beach, but in the touch of a tree or a rock or a wave. You can be altered by the wave and the wave by you. Everyone who plays in the ocean knows this to be true. Merleau-Ponty just expands that intuitive understanding to encompass all perception. He thought that to understand either side of perception- being touched or touching, we needed to know they were not wholly separate, not either/or, and not one and the same. Instead, they overlap, both always part of any perception we have of the other. He thought most of us walk around with limited vision that ignores much of the rich, invisible depth of being sensed by the other. But not painters. According to Merleau-Ponty, while the rest of us (including photographers) couldn’t get at the real substance of perception, painters could render the invisible visible to the rest of us. Their paintings had the potential to render some of this fluid motion, this oscillation between seeing and being seen.
Because I live on the coast, because it’s the discipline at the center of my work and life, because it makes me feel sane, and is just too damn too beautiful to miss, I get in the ocean almost every day. A few weeks ago I hurt my rib in an unlucky fall and, while it’s been healing, I’ve been going in with my camera instead of my surfboard, photographing in the small, late summer waves each dawn and early morning. There are fewer black skimmers and the fish are starting to return in droves, each peaking shore break wave filled with dozens. My own species has begun its daily turtle walks. One one level, they’re out there looking for signs of nesting. But really, I think they are looking to call the meaning of hope into existence, walking with the hope that, for some perceiving moment in the future, they might dig a trench or hold a light that could help hatchlings, endangered as individuals and species, along their way. Even if they don’t save every turtle, they might save themselves.
Today, between sets of waves, a small shark swam from behind me, passing me on the right at a slow, leisurely pace— maybe there’s food aplenty. Rushing isn’t a priority. It must have seen me before I saw it, just so much inedible flotsam.The moment I saw its fin break the water, that instant of perception before I could categorize, the moment when my animal brain registered its size relative to mine (it was tiny, maybe 2 feet long), at its presence in the water, right there, with me, seeing me, and the resulting elation I felt at being seen (if it had been 2 meters long, I expect my perceptions might have been… different),— all reminded me of both Merleau-Ponty, and one of Joanna’s paintings that hangs on my wall, one that evokes something of immersion in liquid and light and motion, just like this morning. Reminding is a word we often say but don’t appreciate. To remind yourself is not just to recall, but to restore your mind to something valuable. I love that painting because it feels like the dissolution that happens to me in the ocean, the unimportant stresses and worries gradually losing concentration until they wind up just disappearing, and, even if they return, the wisdom and perspective that comes from the their intermittent disappearance endures.
Philosophers have been imploring us for a long time to learn to accept what we can’t change. The Stoics of Ancient Greece did it. Some Buddhists did (and do) it. The Serenity Prayer does it. But most of us still suck at it: quick to irritation or anger or a wish for a trap door into which you might dispense with or exchange the reality of the aggressive driver, the glitchy gadget, the broken rib- there are so many situations in our daily lives that regularly, reliably immerse us in stress, even when everything’s going “right.”
As soon as I realized my rib was well and truly hurt, that I might miss weeks of surfing these beautiful summer waves, I panicked. I didn’t want to miss waves. This was a disaster.
A minor one my brain scolded.
My feelings did not obey.
I began to focus on speed healing. Googling nutrition and bone injuries, stocking up on vegetables with Vitamin K (green cabbage has twice as much as red), doubling up on magnesium supplements, uncovering the miracle of comfrey (which is pretty miraculous). Maybe it was just a bad bruise and would be surfable in a few days?!? A couple of false starts over the next week helped me settle in. As a wise yoga teacher once told me, “If you get into a fight with your body, you are going to lose. Every. Single. Time.” Recovery would take exactly as long as it would take.
One of the primary, foundational motivations for this Waves to Wisdom project is finding ways to let others in on one of the central, grounding, and most useful working theories I’ve figured out in a long time spent figuring: our bodies and their perceptions are primary to what we create. What we experience when we are at play and deeply at home in our bodies, when these bodies we all have feel integrated into, even continuous with our larger home on the planet– these moments can be lessons that recast our lives; even the objects, people, and relationships that seem utterly familiar to us. We can perpetually see them anew and, in turn, be renewed in their eyes. The ocean is one particularly exciting and beautiful way to learn these lessons.
If, on the other hand, we spend all of our time scanning, slouching, and constricting, or dominating, forcing, and demanding, we can’t help but create meaning and methods to match. We value what will entertain or enrich us in our slouch instead of allowing ourselves the benefit of experiencing life elongated, expansive, fully oxygenated, and open to what’s right here and far away, open to the interdependence of self and other. We all sometimes allow the endless stream of information and news and wellness advice to overwhelm this moment, the only one we have, the one we don’t get back, the one in which someone nearby, a tree, a turtle, a neighbor, maybe even we ourselves, could benefit from some awareness of seeing and being seen.
That shark was today’s teacher and the painting it somehow called into my awareness the fortunate ongoing reminder of the lesson. I’ve been looking at it for a long time but I saw it anew today and it wasn’t anywhere in sight. I realized, without words, with the flick of the tip of undulating fin and tail, why I’ve loved it so much. That instant of sensing, of being sensed, being part of what Davis Abram calls “the biological matrix of life on the planet,” and being a person fortunate enough to return to walls and art and one painting in particular, was an exquisite episode of “reversibility.”
I owe that “unlucky” fall for the gift of this day sitting at my desk, rib healing, with the painting about as far away as the shark was, seeing me see it with reminded eyes.
For us too, if there’s enough food, maybe rushing doesn’t need to be a priority.
For information about retreats or to set up a free coaching session email maia@wavestowisdom.com.
Sources
Abram, David. “Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth.”Environmental Ethics, volume 10 (1988), pp. 101-120.
Cheron, Guy. “How to Measure the Psychological ‘Flow’? A Neuroscience Perspective.” Frontiers in Psychology 7 (2016): 1823. PMC. Web. 31 Aug. 2018.
“Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)“. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Staiger, Christiane. “Comfrey: A Clinical Overview.” Phytotherapy Research26.10 (2012): 1441–1448. PMC. Web. 31 Aug. 2018.
“Stoicism.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Quinn, Carolyne. “Perception and Painting in Merleau-Ponty’s Thought.” Paris III, Université de Sorbonne-Nouvelle/University College Dublin
Interview: Elizabeth Pepin SIlva
To listen to the interview, scroll to the Media Player at the bottom of this page.
"I think that increasingly as more and more women take to the water we are demanding that we are looked at differently than we have been in the past that we are athletes that we are courageous and confident and that that carries over into our everyday life. When I leave the water I don't leave those things on the beach I take them with me..."
~Elizabeth Pepin Silva
Interview Transcript
Maia: My name is Maia Dery. This episode impart of a series called the Waves to Wisdom Interviews. The project is a simple one. I seek out people I admire, surfers with what look to me to be ocean centered wisdom practices. I ask them if they’d be willing to share a surf session or two and then, after we’ve ridden some waves together, talk to me about their oceanic habits: about surfing, work, meaning, anything that comes up.
Elizabeth Pepin Silva (EPS): I think that increasingly as more and more women take to the water we are demanding that we are looked at differently than we have been in the past that we are athletes that we are courageous and confident and that that carries over into our everyday life. When I leave the water I don’t leave those things on the beach I take them with me every day and it has given me strength in my everyday life that I don’t think I had before I surfed, that’s a profound thing, to be able to just be your, your own person, to just be you and be okay with it.
My conversation with photographer, filmmaker, and writer Elizabeth Pepin Silva took place over two crystal clear California days. We spent time with her friends and family in her hometown of Ojai and had a chance to explore a couple of the nearby surf breaks. Elizabeth’s work as a photographer and filmmaker has heavily influenced my view of surfing and, more importantly, how I see my own place in that world. No surprise at all after seeing her films, her ability to articulate the story of her life’s work and the way it’s been fueled by what we generally think of as play as remarkable. I hope you enjoy her wise words.
Maia: if you are comfortable with it would you tell us your name your age and how long you been surfing.
EPS: I am Elizabeth Pepin Silva and I am almost 52 I will be 52 July 30th and I’ve been surfing for 31 years.
Maia: So, you are a photographer and filmmaker…
EPS: And writer
Maia: and writer. Can you talk a little bit about your work and the focus of it?
EPS: Most of my work has been focused on Ocean and water related things. I, excuse me, all of my personal work is always ocean related and often time of ocean -related and women and I’m really interested in that intersection between humans and nature and how that plays out in people’s lives and also the impact that we have on nature but also the way that nature impacts us in the and definitely that’s the case in oceans and coastlines around the world.
Maia and you are a surfer currently active
EPS: yeah I started surfing in 1980, I thought it was 86, but then when I actually this year I finally come about as I was my 30th anniversary I gotta like figure this out and then I realize that actually I had started surfing in the fall of 1985 and when my friend moved into this house in Marin, I wanted to serve before that but I had no, I didn’t have any money so I couldn’t go buy a board there wasn’t places anywhere to rent boards at that time. I didn’t know anyone who surfed so it was something I wanted to do but had no idea how to go about doing it and so when my friend moved into this house in Marin and the guy that had lived there before and had left a bunch of stuff in the storage space in the back of the house there was a board and she’s like oh you always want to do this, here have it. There was a pool, I put it in the pool and I paddle it around and I’m like, this is so cool! And as I was driving home it was sticking out of this Toyota Corolla, I had this little Toyota Corolla and it was sticking out cause I didn’t have a rack, it, I was at a stoplight in the Castro and this hippie walks up to my car cause it was open cause the board was sticking out, he was like, Hey I want, I wanna go to The Dead at the Oakland Auditorium or Coliseum or something you want to buy my wetsuit” And he had this bag and I was like, okay, so I pulled over, it was the same size as me I couldn’t believe it, it was like it was meant to be, it was so wild [what a story] that’s how I figured out when I started surfing cause I looked up when the Dead played in Oakland and they didn’t play that, do that in the spring of 86, it was in the fall of 85 so that’s how I figured out when I started.
Maia: You know exactly
EPS: Yeah, because of that Dead Head guy. So he gave me a bag, a wetsuit, a little vest ,and some trashed booties, which didn’t fit. And so that weekend I was like okay here we go.
Maia: What an incredible San Francisco tale [yeah] okay so can you let me just give a little background, I found your work because I have been incorporating surfing into a couple of the academic classes that I teach at this small college and woman, an academic name Krista Comer wrote a book called Surfer Girls in the New World Order in which you and your photographs are featured and I was I and many of my students were deeply inspired by your focus on women and your recent film La Maestra. Can you tell us a little bit about that film and how that came about?
EPS: Well La Maestra is my second surf film, I did a film before that with Sally Limburg called One Winter Story which is about the first woman to surf Mavericks, and then did some water-related film, educational films for the state of California and I wanted to make another surf film but Sally and I decided not to work together anymore because she lives in Hawaii and it was just too complicated and um, I just wasn’t finding anyone that was really, whose story was really grabbing. I’m not interested in most professional women surfers, because to me it’s obvious why they surf, that’s their job and they get paid to do it. And I just wasn’t finding a story that resonated with me.
I really wanted to do a story about a woman in Mexico but because my Spanish is poor there was barriers to that and I felt it was extremely important to tell the story of in the person’s own language and so it took a while. One Winter Story came out in 2006, October 2006 and Paul Farraris, who is a friend of mine, surf photographer from San Francisco called me in the end of 2013 telling me that he got this grant for teachers, art, art and media teachers he is a media teacher at a low-income high school in San Francisco. The grant allows that art or film teacher to hire a mentor, do a small project that will teach the teacher how, a new skill that they can then pass on to their students.
EPS: I worked at PBS for 14 years as a producer and so Paul wanted to learn how to make a PBS style documentary and then in turn teach his students and so his idea was to, he wanted to make a film in Baja. He is half Mexican American and his mother’s from Baja and so Paul speaks pretty solid Spanish and he loves going to Baja. My husband and I also love going down to Baja to surf and camp, and he wanted to feature these 2 ex-professional surfers, gringos from California who had moved to this very tiny surf community in southern Baja and I know who, I knew who they were and I just like I’m not interested at all.
That is not a story I want to tell. I don’t think they’re worthy of the story and I am just so tired of watching surf films about white people who go to other people’s countries and they tell the story of that country and you never get to hear from the locals that actually live there you rarely get to see locals surfing in these surf movies. It feels really colonial to me and condescending and I’m not interested in participating in that at all and site but I said I really want to make a film about a Mexican surfer in Baja! That completely interests me and you have the skills, Dude and let’s do this. And by the way I have the this woman that I think would be really cool.
In 2012 my husband and I‘d gone to this little fishing surfing village and I was shooting photos when this Mexican, young Mexican woman paddled out and I was immediately like. “Woah, who is that because that was the first time I’d ever seen a Mexican woman paddle out on a board. not only did she paddle out then she just completely starts ripping, like, holy cow who is this person and I’m taking pictures and I just used just beautiful, beautiful surfer and my friend who lives there, a gringo, pulled up, I’m like “Who is that woman?” She’s like “That’s Myra she’s a local teacher, she’s taught herself to surf, she’s good, huh? I’m like, “Yeah!” So Myra gets out while Karen was still on the shore and I was introduced, “Hi, Hi.” Just got some photos of you. “Oh, cool, great.” That that was our entire like one minute interaction.
So I told Paul about her and sent him the pictures, he’s like “Oh my God, of course. [of course] This court actually is so cool, we gotta do this.” So I said okay I’ll email Karen and see if she can contact Myra because that town is so small there’s no phone or cell phone service. People have, there’s a community grocery store for lack of a better way to put it, also like a community space at the same time, and they have a community phone and there’s a phrase in Spanish, I can think of it right now, what these phones are called but it’s basically a way for people in these tiny communities to be able to communicate with the outside world. And there is Internet service there. It’s poor, it’s through satellite.
So Karen went talk to Myra, Myra said she was open to it so we were emailing back and forth but she never really, besides that one minute, didn’t meet us until the day we arrived eight months later and said, “Hi, we’re the film crew. We’re here to film you.” and they were just amazing, her, she lives with her mom and dad and they completely open their lives and their house up to us and were, were game to do whatever we wanted them to do and we, like, “We don’t want you to do anything that you wouldn’t already be doing, can we just… We want to just film your life from the time you wake up until the time go to bed.” They’re like, “Okay come back tomorrow. I get up at this time, go for it.”
Maia: Such an act of the trust on their part [huge] it must feel like a big responsibility.
EPS: It does, it’s a huge responsibility and one that I, I try and respect I mean you are telling someone’s story and they are giving you the gift of their story and, I, in my films I like to let my subjects tell that story and sometimes and I try not to have an agenda. And of course there’s no such thing as a as a film maker that doesn’t have an agenda, I mean you put your stamp on it by your editing decisions by the, your questions to the person by the things that you film in that community, of course, you’re putting your mark on it and maybe someone else would’ve ask different questions, would’ve filmed different things, so there’s no getting around that but I try really hard to just let this film be told as the person wants to tell it. That’s why I’m not a big fan of narration um an you know sometimes, like in the case of Myra, whose kind of quiet and you know can make for a little bit of a slower film, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impact is any less valuable than some big splashy film with a character that’s very excitable and boisterous.
Maia: I’ve seen the film and shown it to students and it’s beautiful, it’s just it’s eloquent and it it’s really quite succinct I didn’t find it slow in the least and her surfing, even if there were no words, her surfing is just remarkable and at the fact that she is, my understanding, I’ve never been to Baja or even to Mexico but my understanding from books is that it’s actually rare for young Mexican women [yes] to surf and that that is changing but gradually and only in some places.
EPS: Yes
Maia: so for this to unfold in this very rural place is notable
EPS: and she got quite a bit of shit for it at first, some people were like like “That’s for gringo women not for Mexican women and why are you doing this” and “You’re wasting your time.” and most women her age were getting married and having children and you know in her little town she’s a rare woman that is has a college degree and a life of her own and interests of her own and no husband or kids at that time that she had to worry about. And so I think that, and in fact the people in the community said she was an inspiration especially to young girls of in opening up the possibilities. They’ve realized through their teacher, la maestra, that there was a world beyond that tiny fishing village. That they weren’t just restricted to being a mom and a wife and what else could there be? And there’s definitely, last time we went back down there to show the film a year later after was finished I couldn’t believe how many young girls were in the water.
Maia: Oh my goodness
EPS: It was cool [wow] really cool.
Maia: So, you were there at that moment and you saw that influence beginning to unfold.
EPS: Totally yeah yeah
Maia: What a gift!
EPS: Yeah, it was really neat, is really neat to watch the young boys and how, you know, there wasn’t any separation they were surfing together, the boys were helping some of the girls that weren’t as competent as some of the other girls and it to me seemed like a really healthy relationship between the sexes while
Maia: Wow, such a great story and a great story well told I think we’re all lucky you were down there to get it.
EPS: Oh, thank you
Maia: So, so this project, this Waves to Wisdom project is in its first phase and in the sort of prompt the creative prompt is that it appears to me that there are some surfers and certainly not all and I think you you know many surfers who don’t appear to be inspired to do things that are particularly wiser, or that seem particularly wise but the Waves to Wisdom project is based on my working theory that there are some surfers and ocean centered people whose regular contact with the ocean inspires and guides them and helps them do incredible and positive things in the world and you seem to me like an embodiment of that proposition. Would you think that is an accurate characterization? Is that an accurate characterization?
EPS: Totally I mean ever since I can remember I’ve been going to the beach and to the ocean and I think that it is a place that grounds me that allows me when I go into the ocean to clear my mind, and find my center and balance in my life, I think that it allows me to expand my creative side of me often when I’m stuck in my work I go there and my let my mind just go and I come out with ideas that I then, come back to my house and execute. I come from a long line of anxious women. My mom has pretty bad mental health issues I think it is a way for me to, not go, you know not not follow in the footsteps of the other women in my family, you know it’s definitely better than Prozac, that’s for sure.
Maia: we share that history in common, I have a history of anxiety in my family as well and I’m a completely fear driven person and it’s it’s interesting when I say that to people sometimes they, they find it bemusing that I chose surfing because it sounds like such a scary thing in and in fact it can be [right] but but it does help. Can you talk a little bit more about why you think it helps or how it helps?
EPS: It’s been proven over and over in studies that exercise helps people with mental health issues and I don’t suffer from that thank God, but I do think that if I don’t go surfing I definitely feel like I’m more anxious I get grouchier, I find it harder to be creative.
So, you know if I hadn’t found surfing when I did in late 85 I mean I definitely was on a somewhat self-destructive path and surfing I think steered me away from, you know, getting more into the whole sex drugs and rock ‘n roll thing. I was really into the music scene I was the day manager at the Fillmore Auditorium, you know, so I was staying up late and partying a lot and although there’s many, many surfers that have been hard-core drug addicts [absolutely] I found it challenging to be that kind of surfer I, I needed to go to bed. I needed to not drink and not do drugs if I wanted to surf and I was so taken with surfing from the very first time that I stood up, I was lucky, it was the first time I went surfing I stood up, that I wanted it, I wanted it badly and so that whole partying side fell away because I wanted to surf so much and so that healthy, you know, it led me to be much more to take care of myself a lot more which is cool.
So I think that also being in the ocean and specially surfing if your anxiety, filled with anxiety or anger it is really hard to surf I mean it it comes through in your body you’re stiff, you’re going to fall a lot, get frustrated and so again you kinda have to like let that go if you’re going to you decent surfer. So it forces you and there is nothing more like being in the moment than having like a five wave over head set coming at you and you better be only thinking about what’s going on right in that moment and not like you know worried about bills or you know freaking out about this or that, cause you gotta focus on what you’re doing make sure you gonna be safe and get through that five wave set. (23:20)
Maia: If you are a surfer who for whatever reason doesn’t surf big waves does it still help with that ability to be present you think?
EPS: Oh completely! I don’t surf big waves. I don’t like big waves I think there’s this really kind of over-the-top obsession right now with mainstream media about big wave surfing and I, believe me, I think it’s great, I have friends that are big wave surfers I made a film about a big wave surfer One Winter Story and I ,they get, they deserve all the credit because that is something that most people cannot do but I don’t think it makes you any less of a surfer or I don’t think you are a better surfer just because you can surf big waves the way you connect with nature and the ocean and that dance between you and the water gives you that release and that pleasure no matter if it’s 2 feet or 50 feet.
Maia: You’re a filmmaker photographer and writer and you focus on water and surfing. That sounds like a lot of people’s dream job. Can you talk a little bit about how you got to where you are? How you arrived here?
EPS: Well, it’s a dream job if you don’t like making a lot of money [ah, there’s a catch] I’m broke but I’m happy! Thank God for my husband! Yeah, it is a challenging way to make a living as far as supporting oneself but it is incredibly rewarding and being able to, to because of what I have the way I’ve chosen to express myself in my photos and my filmmaking, you know, I didn’t choose a traditional surf photographer filmmaker Path
Maia: and in what is that because the primary audience I would imagine for these interviews is going to be non-surfers so what is a traditional path?
EPS: So, a traditional surf photographer and filmmaker would be photographing mainly male, white male professional surfers and getting those photographs into magazines, the front and back covers, or magazines or the two-page spread are where the money shots are and always being on the lookout for the next big surfer because you want to set up your relationship with that surfer early on as their careers build they will carry you as a photographer and film maker along with them and then their sponsors will pay you to go on these trips to go film and photograph them and you’ll get paid again by the surf magazines for covering them.
But that whole scene does not interest me at all in the least. And I did photograph some professional women surfers but even then I wasn’t all that excited and so my path was I came out it first of all not because I wanted to makes surf photography or surf filmmaking for making a career, I came at it, I’d already, was already shooting photos and making films, and I was surfing and when I first started surfing in the 80s there in Northern California there were very very few women surfers but around 1994 I began to see a lot of women get in the water.
But the surf magazines in the surf media and surf industry would not reflect those changes in their editorial and visual content and the focus continued to be on white male surfers and the photographs you did see with, of women were them, blonde haired blue-eyed, skinny teenage girls standing on, excuse me standing on the beach watching men surf, you didn’t see them in the water and I started get really frustrated like, “Hey there’s a whole new group of people getting in the water. Why are you addressing their needs? Why aren’t you reflecting this change?” and I definitely think that’s because the makeup of the staff of these, these companies in these surf magazines were all white dudes from Southern California, you know?
Maia: Narrow vision
EPS: Very narrow vision and very narrow definition of what and who is a surfer. So, I brought, started bringing my still camera to the beach. And after I would surf I’d go and photograph the women that I met on the beach. And I was very influenced, again, unlike most surf photographers who shoot color and are influenced by recent surf photographers. I was influenced by the early surf photographer’s like Doc Baldy Leroy Grannis and my most favorite Ron Church who was Jacques Ceausteau’s photographer as well as being a surf photographer.
Maia: There’s a dream job!
EPS: Yeah, he was amazing, I really, his work, everyone should know about his were just beautiful, beautiful shots black-and-white, primarily. And so I was shooting black and white and of course this is film, this is before digital cameras and so from there I moved on to shooting, actually shot in the water before I shot with a long lens so I got a water housing then I started renting big lenses and got a big lens, but I was just doing it. It wasn’t like I was even sending them in to the surf magazines. Cause I didn’t think they’d be interested.
And I was just kind of teaching myself. I met, I saw a few surf photographers when I would go on road trips I saw them on the beach and would try to talk to them. They were all men they weren’t interested in speaking with me. I finally connected with two surf photographers in Northern California, Thomas Campbell and Patrick Trefz who are amazingly nice and answered all my questions whenever I had them and really helped guide me and I thank them profusely for that.
I just kind of found my own voice. And then soon after women’s, finally, although the mainstream surf magazines were not showing women surfing, women’s surf magazines started to appear. Wahine was the first. It was created by two women surfers in Southern California and so that I had a outlet for my work. And I also was, I was getting gallery shows that turned into museum shows. I had friends who were pretty who were pretty famous artists and so they kind of, Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen and really helped champion my work. So I actually started making money from it. And people were buying and it was lovely. It was lovely that people understood what I was trying to do, that I was trying to provide a different way of looking at women surfers than what was being fed to them by the surf media.
So it was good as I was really I was thrilled that people understood that beauty can come in all different forms and that we should be celebrating these women surfers as athletes not as objects that unfortunately still to this day continues, to that continues to be perpetuated that these women are being sexualized and there the focus is on their brief beauty rather than their surfing ability.
Maia: It’s one of the sometimes it feels to me like disastrous side disastrous side effects of the mainstream representations of surfing and and I think this is driven mostly by the surf industry, the big companies that dominate it, is that, as I’ve tried to encourage many young people and this is some men to be primarily women, to learn to surf they don’t think that they can because they don’t look like that. I mean that they wouldn’t use those words but fundamentally it’s it’s that’s that they don’t feel like they’re “athletic enough” or they have good enough balance but if you dig just a little bit beneath the surface it’s that they know what surfers look like and they know they don’t look like that.
So I think the work that you’re doing and others who are trying to represent surfers of all ethnic backgrounds and all shapes and sizes is so crucial not just to make a statement but to communicate to younger people that this is that this is a form of of and are participatory joy and embodied wisdom that’s open to every single person, varying abilities, varying physical abilities, all different kinds of people. Speaking of varying physical abilities can you tell us how you learned he is a dark room have had no funny because people where I learned to use a dark room?
EPS: That’s kind of funny because, where I learned to use a darkroom was at a camp for blind and deaf, actually was all ages, we had to each, it was two weeks and was varying ages, each session. So I, in high school, I didn’t really have much to do in the summer except for have summer jobs and so my counselor at school in eighth grade, her son was blind and she ran this camp called Enchanted Hills Camp for the Blind in Napa during the summer months between school sessions and she told me about it and asked if I’d want to come up and volunteer. So I said sure!
So from eighth grade to 11th grade each summer I volunteered up there and I was allowed to choose what departments of the camp I would work in, so I was an avid horse fiend so horses were a natural fit for me but then I was getting interested in photography and so I volunteered for the photography department. Which surprises a lot of people that you know why would there be a photography department at a camp for blind people? But in fact most blind people have some of sort of vision whether they can see shadows are light or dark or sometimes even outlines of people or fuzziness, most of them are not completely and totally, only see black and so I volunteered in the photo department and the college kid who was running the photo department taught me and the campers that chose to take that elective, photography, how to not only shoot but also develop our own work so that’s how I learned how to work in a darkroom.
Maia: Great story so that and how are the pictures from the blind campers?
EPS: The blind cameras actually took really interesting, cool pictures.
Maia: I bet
EPS: it was it was amazing to see what they were seeing because you know as a sighted person this is what I see but for someone that has limited sight like how are they, how they see the world and so this was a window into what they were seeing I thought it was a really really neat experience.
Maia: what it seems as though not only a neat experience but what an influential time for you to have that experience and to understand something fundamental about vision that maybe couldn’t you get I mean I’ve been a photography teacher this will be my 16th year and one of the things that I noticed is very similar to the to the surf media story we are all so heavily influenced by media that when most photography students go out and take pictures they’re trying to emulate the billions of pictures that they see and so if you were cut off from those influences it might in some ways be visually freeing.
EPS: Yes well it also open my eyes as to what as if it what is a photograph you know and what makes a good photograph versus what you bad photograph and of course that’s in a way subjective and but my friend Margaret Kilgallan the artist, who sadly has passed away, she said something to me once that I will I will I think about always probably till I die and she said that there is perfection in the imperfection and she’s absolutely right. I think that you can find beauty in almost anything if you look at it in the certain way and allowing your mind to be open rather than narrowly defined by the rest of the world. and you know I think the technique in photography is important but if you’re if you’re going to make mistakes and still print that photograph you better have a reason why like why is that mistake in there? And but I think that those mistakes can be effectively used in your imagery.
Maia: One my favorite photographers working and alive today is Sally Mann who has you know in her recent work just completely embraced these serendipitous quote mistakes and such evocative powerful expressive work comes out of it.
EPS: I love her work I think it’s it’s wonderful and I do the same in my work as a I mean I’m not equating myself with Sally Mann, believe me, in any way shape or form but what I what I mean by that is that I used to in my early surf photography chuck out all the ones that I didn’t, I thought weren’t perfect and you, luckily I was shooting on film so the negatives are still there and I, after few years started going back and looking again and realizing that I actually had some pretty beautiful photographs, they, if I just looked at them differently.
EPS: And in fact some of my best sellers were ones that I initially didn’t print
Maia: Isn’t that fascinating [yeah] So your vision about your own work, even work that you’ve already done has evolved over time?
EPS: Completely
Maia: So you are not formally trained as a photographer?
EPS: No I’ve never taken, I’ve tried a couple times to take classes I lasted like two or three classes and then I just I just got bored, I mean, I just wasn’t you my goal still before I die is to get it I’d like to get a degree in photography. I mean I do have a degree I just got my degree in journalism with an emphasis on magazine writing I think cause at the time when I was in school I just felt like I had I was pretty solid in my basic photography skills and I was a good writer but not in the way, not in the journalistic way so that’s I wanted that the skills to be honed so that I could go out and get jobs.
Maia: And I don’t know if this had any part to do in motivation but you certainly learned how to be a masterful storyteller comes through in your work and your still images and your and your videos your documentary.
EPS: Well, thank you.
Maia: I think that journalism degree must’ve played into that on some level.
EPS: Yeah, maybe. yeah
Maia: So our alarm just went off- yesterday we were just so fortunate to go to Rincon yesterday with a beautiful, what would you call that knee—knee to maybe waste at the most? Yeah, knee to waste although the outside sets people were getting like chest high waves.
Maia: it was now and you know I’m from North Carolina where everything is a beach break and those long point break waves are just magical it is going to take a force of will to get me on that plane back to beach breaks but we will, we’re going to go surfing now because the conditions are probably to be good soon you tides coming up soon going to get her but the student will pick this up afterwards.
Maia: OK, so we’re back from our surf at Rincon [yes] another really fun longboard.
EPS: It was quite lovely
Maia: With a relatively friendly crowd and not too many of us.
EPS: Yeah
Maia: Yeah it was good. Lots of women out today…
EPS: Yes, lots of young women I loved the mom with her two sons teaching them how to surf that was really cool
Maia: Absolutely
EPS: It was a good day.
Maia: It was a very good day. So one thing that that I’ve noticed in the last couple of days I’ve have been lucky enough to spend can hanging around and see how you do your work is how generous you are with other, other artists and documentarians. Can you talk just briefly about the documentary that I saw the other night that you put on for some friends?
EPS: So that was a film called The Great Highway and it’s done by two friends of mine from San Francisco, Mark Gunson and Krista Howell and I think that was Kris’s first time as a filmmaker and the reason it took them so long is that, one, as with most independent filmmakers it’s always money, trying to find it to pay for production costs which, although the equipment has gotten easier, it really hasn’t reduced the cost of making a film all that much and so finding that money is challenging, especially for surf films and especially for films that don’t focus on some surf rock star that a surf company would want to help promote through a film and helping pay for that film.
So, I have, when I learned to make documentaries I had some mentors who literally taught me everything. Peter Stein and Joan Saffa, both Peabody award-winning filmmakers at PBS who took me under their wing and taught me everything they know and I was very grateful for that. I didn’t go to film school. I have a degree in journalism, print write… magazine writing, print so while many of those skills are transferable to documentary filmmaking there still is the actual nuts and bolts, how do you make a film? How do you put together? And there are many more moving parts than when you’re writing the story. You have the visuals, you have the music, the sound mix, um sound sweetening, which is, like, like you know birds chirping, adding the ocean sounds or whatever you need and so they taught me that for free.
I mean it well not even for free I was getting paid, it was a job so with that generous spirit in mind I’ve always felt that I need to do the same thing and help other filmmakers with the knowledge that I’ve gathered over the years. And to me also with it’s a selfish thing, I guess, because not only does it bring me great joy to help other people see, help bring their creative endeavors to fruition but selfish in the way that I want more voices telling stories in the surf world and I’m not able to do everything myself so I wanted to help other people to be able to gather these important stories before they’re lost. Cause once these people pass and their, their stories go with them, we’re screwed. So, you know that’s that’s my way of giving back to people.
Maia: Do I remember correctly that that film took 12 years to…
EPS: Yes it took 12 years to complete for a variety of reasons
Maia: And how long have your two One Winter’s Tale?
EPS: One Winter’s Story [One Winter’s Story] One Winter’s Story took five years and La Maestra only took a year.
Maia: La Maestra only took a year?
EPS: But that was kind of self-imposed because we only had the small grant that Paul received plus we raised some money through Indi go-go so we had the money to go once to Myra’s hometown for a week and that was it. (4:29) What we got was what we got and I recognize that it probably would’ve been a richer story had we been able to go back a few times. There’s definitely things that I will wish could we could’ve included. I would like to have interviewed for example the principle of her school. We did try to interview some of the kids they just could not say anything on camera that did work out [okay] but I would like to have interviewed her parents. We just didn’t have the time for it [right] So it is what it is and you know that monetary restraint for most independent filmmakers is always a factor and so how do you get as much as you can with the money that you, money and the time that you have.
Maia: So let me just say this one more time since I got it wrong, One Winter’s Story.
EPS: Yes, it’s One Winter’s Story
Maia: So you are surfing regularly right? Almost every week?
EPS: I surf every, at least once a week and I try to surf 3 to 5 times a week. I usually don’t surf on the weekends the crowds are to large and I don’t have very much fun when that happens so I tend not to surf on the weekends but if it’s really good I know some spots that have fewer people and I will go out.
Maia: Can you say anything more about ways that you think surfing or ocean activities might be different from other kinds of sports.
EPS: waves are this incredible force of nature unto themselves and no wave is the same as the next even when there’s a swell and it’s coming from a particular direction and you are at a point break, so it’s breaking in the exact same spot every time nonetheless each wave is unique and unto itself and while that can be true of like I guess skiing, snow changes as the day progresses and gets warmer and then colder again, it’s not actively, it’s not actively moving what’s under your feet, the snow under your feet is not actively moving and you don’t have to react to it in a way like a wave, which is actively moving and you are trying to become one with that movement, um and connect with nature in that way that it’s up I think it’s pretty unique to most sports and I think it is that connection that you have with the wave that is profound in a way that doesn’t occur in in other sports.
It’s profound for me that’s for sure. I think the surfing is a pretty difficult thing to explain to anyone that doesn’t surf and even if you talk to a surfer right after they’ve surfed like maybe one of the best waves of their life or at least the best wave of that day when they try to describe it, it’s it really impossible and even recall the, what has just occurred in your own mind is almost impossible because it’s just so happening in the moment and then it’s gone and the wave’s gone and there’s nothing, maybe someone saw you on it maybe someone took a picture but really it’s just vanished you know and I’m not sure why, why that lends itself to being so impossible to describe but it is I think it, it unless, you can describe it but it comes off something little cheesy and you know cliché.
Maia: So you’re you have many creative outlets and endeavors if undertaken in your life your musician no I wouldn’t call myself a musician like lately as a way to play music took early see you play music and you photograph and you make films great books you write books and that I wonder about because I’m not a musically person much less musically inclined almost any other person I’ve ever met and music to me when you are a musician when you play music it looks from the outside very similar to surfing in some ways it’s ephemeral if you’re playing with other people there’s always this other force that you’re in concert with literally if it’s going well you must have to be powerfully focused for it to go well and can get to be utterly different from surfing can you talk to me a little bit and struck me as somebody who knows how to surf but knows almost nothing about music from a primary participant.
EPS: So, I don’t know that I’m a good enough musician to be able to answer that question I mean I don’t I played in one punk rock band when I was 17 in other than that I just play by myself for the most part we had these jam sessions in our backyard and I’ll be playing along but definitely as with surfing and with my playing if I start thinking about too much it doesn’t go as well as if I empty my mind and I just let it unfold and let my body and my emotion just take over and that’s what I think one of the the plagues of the modern world is that we get so wound up in our own heads and then go on the Internet and look as of now everything has to be now now now instead of just relaxing and letting go, and letting what needs to happen come to you. And when you are able to do that when you’re surfing, you’re definitely surfing a lot better, when you’re able to do that, I find, in the creative process, you create a lot better.
Maia: Do you think surfing has made you happier person?
EPS: Oh I’m definitely a happier person because I surf, without a doubt. As I said right, I come from a rather troubled family and, that continues to have issues to this day and I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t have surfing. It brings me enormous joy and even in those moments of sorrow like when my friend Zeuf Hesson passed away and I was profoundly sad and would just be gardening and suddenly be moved to tears at missing her so much, I was still able to go to the ocean and because she was also a surfer there was that connection as well but just felt like the ocean was there for me in a way and that I could just sit in that space and just be. And I didn’t even have to be surfing a wave, like I could just be bobbing around on my board and just kind of letting myself do what I needed to do to mourn the passing of my friend or to get through some heavy crap that was going on in my family and I always come out of the ocean feeling a lot better than I went in. Yesterday we surfed I was freaking exhausted I really, to be honest, didn’t want to go I just wanted to be by myself, it’s just I felt like I had people overload and I was just like, just wanted to take a nap and read my book and not talk to anyone for a while and I was actually very grateful that it’s like, we’re going to go and we did and I actually you know we went to a place that was small and mellow and I came out of the water feeling a lot better because of it. So it’s funny though sometimes you gotta fight those tendencies to just not want to do anything and sit on your butt even though you know that once you get in that water you’re gonna come out of it 1 million times better than you were.
Maia: I’ve never regretted going surfing.
EPS: Even when there’s like 10,000 people in the water, as long as they don’t hit me right I, you know it’s good.
Maia: It’s good, it’s good. Is there anything else that you would like to add anything that you have to say or that you’ve notices about having this regular contact with the ocean in your life about being a surfer.
EPS: While I don’t think that for everyone surfing is going be that thing you know but what I have found, part of what my relationship the ocean has taught me what I have found from surfing but if you are able to find that one thing whether it be the connection of the ocean and surfing, or hiking mountains, or gardening or what ever it is if you have that one thing that you are able to do that connects you with nature and allows you to be in the moment, I think you’re much happier person for it and in this, in our world that is ever becoming more technologically connected and less connected to the natural world I think it is evermore important to find that connection to the natural world because I think the world is suffering because of our increasing lack of connection. It’s it causes our human relationships suffering and it causes our relationships with the planet to suffer and I think we are seeing profound impacts because of that and so I hope that people find something that they can do that will bring them that connection because I think it is but it’ll make them far a more rounded I think it’ll make them a more rounded and happier person.
Maia: You’ve really focused your career as a surf documentarian on women. Do you have anything to say to women not just female server certainly female surfers but any women of any age that you like to pass on from what you noticed in this career?
EPS: well I would just encourage women to try and have a relationship with the ocean whether you sir for you simply wade around door you walk on the beach and collect shells or sit on a bench and stare out to sea. I think that there’s something about women in the ocean that, I’m not going be very eloquent about this.
Maia: You can take as many tries you want maybe the first time thought of it in those terms.
EPS: I don’t know why it would be different for a woman than a man, why a woman’s relationship to the water is different than a man’s but I have in my 31 years of surfing watched women who are struggling in one way or another develop a relationship with the ocean and their struggles have been minimized if not wiped away and I think that there is something very empowering about a woman’s connection to a powerful force of nature such as the ocean and you know it requires determination and strength and will and confidence in oneself that you can be in the ocean and not get hurt and that you also recognize your limits and keep yourself safe and not put yourself in situations that you could get hurt. And so in that way it allows women to test themselves in a way that may be other venues don’t offer.
Maia: Determination and strength and confidence are not necessarily attributes that the culture always encourages women to develop.
EPS: yeah but they should and I am not much for allowing I’m not much for having society dictate who or what you should be, I mean, I’ve always kind of rebelled against that perhaps too, at the sacrifice of monetary reward but I think that increasingly as more and more women take to the water we are demanding that we are looked at differently than we have been in the past that we are athletes that we are courageous and confident and that that carries over into our everyday life. When I leave the water I don’t leave those things on the beach I take them with me every day and it has given me strength in my everyday life that I don’t think I had before I surfed, that’s a profound thing, to be able to just be your, your own person, to just be you and be okay with it.
Maia: And unlike many people you’re part of a surfing couple.
EPS: Yeah, it’s it was it was it brought us together it was how our romance flourished I actually knew my husband since I was 18, he was just kind of part of the music scene that I was in but we weren’t like hanging out friends or anything like that I just knew who he was and we reconnected when I was 32 and he asked how I was staying fit and I told him that I had been surfing for a long while and so he said he wanted to go and learn so I took him and never got rid of him but it’s great I I honestly don’t see how for someone like myself the ocean and surfing is so much a part of who I am and what I do I don’t see how I could be partnered with somebody who didn’t have that same relationship to the ocean because otherwise I’d never see my partner so it’s good.
Maia: Having that kind of shared passion
EPS: Although we like different waves. He like big waves and I like small waves.
Maia: It likes seems like there’s some compromise in there somewhere.
EPS: You know we we find spots that have both.
Maia: That’s good will thank you so much for your generosity it’s it’s not just bestowed upon me but I’m particularly grateful.
Maia: Providing inspirational, transformative experiences is central to the mission of Waves to Wisdom. To learn more about our retreats where we use learning to surf as a means to guide you into a powerful capacity to envision and create, a more effective, fulfilled version of your self at work and in life visit wavestowisdom.com.
I-Ocean: Part 2
I-Ocean: Ideas for a good life from Ethan and Martin
Part 2
On good afternoons, here at the blue metal patio table where I work, I lean back and close my eyes in search of some elusive word or idea and I can still see lines of swell coming towards me. To have this sort of oceanic wave overlaying one’s usual electromagnetic brainwave is a good influence. On days like today, when I’m practicing this discipline well, the refrigerator’s hum and the call of the Carolina wren nesting under the bedroom window are part of the same whole as the white noise of the rough surf punctuated by the scoop of resting skimmers. Skimmers must get tired their from long, low flights just above the water’s edge, open beaks dragging along the surface. Holding tea on my palate for a few extra seconds, I wonder what that kind of ocean practice must look like through their eyes and feel like in their beaks.
Over years of regular play, effort, and immersion, the ocean has given me new ears to hear and I’ve gradually become a better listener. It isn’t just the waves themselves or the liquid logic of other surfers I feel attuned to. The waves’ chaotic beauty and my own fear, innumerable failures and rare moments of accomplishment seem to have allowed me to feel more connected to just about anyone honestly grappling with big, powerful, overwhelming questions and forces. These days, that’s a lot of us.
Learning to surf is, as Ethan Crouch observed in the latest Waves to Wisdom Interview, “an ongoing practice.” For me, part of that practice involves being open to taking off on some unexpected, even uncomfortable rides, especially off the board. The latest was a difficult but immensely rewarding few days submerged in the writing of Martin Buber. Ethan inadvertently assigned the reading, in particular Buber’s book I and Thou (Ich und Du), when he cited it as one of his primary philosophical influences.
Buber was a Jewish theologian and philosopher who wrote the first version of I and Thou between the two world wars. I’m neither Jewish, theological, or even theistic but it’s precisely the creative potential of this sort of dis-orientation that lies at the heart of Waves to Wisdom. Our reactions to the unfamiliar and unexpected have equally unfamiliar and unexpected lessons to offer. I’m grateful to Buber for the intellectual and existential workout, and for the deepened appreciation for the time with Ethan.
In his introduction of Ich und Du (I and Thou), translator Walter Kaufmann warns that the original work, with its plays on words and unconventional use of language, is essentially untranslatable. Since my German doesn’t extend far past “bratwurst,” I’ll just have to trust him.
One of Kaufmann’s first tasks is to take issue with previous translations’ use of “Thou” for “Du.” Thou, Kaufmann, notes, is just plain stuffy. It’s true— when’s the last time you “thou’d” a loved one? As I understood him, one of Buber’s goals is to make a case for seeing with open eyes and hearing with new ears. He’s making a case for the importance and reward of spending all our days swimming in the waters of deep love and presence, a love that is all around us in the workaday world.
“Thou,” Kaufmann notes, “immediately brings to mind… God of the pulpits,” a power sequestered in the sacred sabbath. Instead, Kaufmann translates “Du” as “You”— the You of lovers, parents, true friends, and those who “pray spontaneously” to an intimate diety. Reading in the wake of working on the Ethan interview, this work is an evocative manual for accessing connection in a world that creates and pushes us into separation and fragmentation. Sow how do you do it?
Buber’s cornerstone idea is that we humans build our communication and, in the process, ourselves with the use of two “basic words”— I-It and I-You. We are always choosing between one or the other in all of our interactions with other people and the world. We speak these two basic words with our hearts, attitudes, actions and values and “by being spoken they establish a mode of existence.” Every time you use the word “I,” in thought, speech, or deed, you choose I-It or I-You and, in the process, alter the form of your self.
When we speak I-You we are intimate, open, and utterly present. We feel the You we encounter and ourselves as part of the whole, infinite, eternal You. Speaking I-It puts us in a place of distance, categorization, abstraction or analysis and we might see the other before us as just one of many, an object to be used or experienced.
Now, Buber doesn’t come right out and say I-It is terrible but the whole work is a lavish literary celebration of the benefits of speaking I-You as much as possible. Buber thinks no human is free from necessarily existing in both modes. Our lives are a combination and so are we.
The connection to Ethan’s life story was clear to me. I found his sense of what Brené Brown calls “true belonging” inspiring. In my work as a teacher, mentor, and coach and also in the messy beauty of my own life, I’ve worked to guide many people wrestling with how they could find or cultivate this sort of connection.
Buber runs right at the pervasive problem of loneliness and isolation in I and Thou and, as he’s a theologian, it’s no surprise that his suggestions are all embedded in a relationship to all that’s divine. He has thoughts about overcoming loneliness but this is no feel-good, self help prescription that could be bulleted into 10 takeaways that will make you rich and happy.
Feelings, in fact, are only a part of what he thinks is required for connection and community to thrive. He writes, “Loving community is supposed to come into being when people come together, prompted by free, exuberant feeling, and want to live together” but “that is not the case.” All members of a true community “have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single, living center.” For Buber, the word he uses to describe this center is sometimes the You-world and sometimes God. If my reading is accurate, we are both and both are us.
According to Buber, “The You-world coheres in the center in which the extended lines of relationships intersect: in the eternal You.” (p.148) In our interview, Ethan told the story of the extended lines of his own relationships with fellow activists. After working long, hard hours together to effect change or pass legislation on the ocean’s behalf, with no guarantees of success, Ethan realized what he felt for his companions was unadulterated love. There is I-You all over this tale.
These activists share love for and a desire to protect the ocean from further assault from those in the It-world who only use and measure it. It certainly looks as if the ocean might be functioning as the single, active center of the community. It is, after all, the biggest active center in our earthly corner of the cosmos. And, in Buber’s language, speaking You to it can be profoundly transformative.
But life can’t all be I-You. Most of us do work that consists of analysis, abstraction, measurement or categorization. We inevitably return to our desks, screens, and boxes. Certainly, as a construction consultant with a “passion for scheduling” (!!!), Ethan spends much of his time It-ing all over the world and that’s a good thing! Buildings need to be thought about, analyzed, categorized, and measured. But maybe his capacity to carry that active, oceanic center into his work world alters him and his relationship to his work for the better.
According to Buber, “Every actual relationship in the world alternates between actuality and latency… You must disappear into the chrysalis of the It in order to grow wings again.” But if the relationship is pure, “latency is merely drawing a deep breath during which the You remains present.” (148)
When Ethan talked in our interview about developing long term relationships with his clients, building public projects, and protecting his home stretch of coastline it certainly sounded as though the latent You of his regular, loving immersion in the ocean, in his words, “that experience with the Thou,” might form the breathing center of the his work life in the It-world.
As a theologian, Buber’s work is to understand, articulate, and study the nature of the divine. While the language of God (and especially the Fatherly sort) still gets my back up at times, a stance of reverence before the continual revelation of a relationship with a higher power gets more comfortable every time I get in the ocean with an intention to surf. I will not be in charge of what that looks like. Not ever. Each wave is more practice in understanding that predictions are rarely true, and even current happenings are bursting with implications we can neither fully perceive nor accurately assess. Analysis in the moment interferes with full presence and is sometimes worse than useless.
To surf as a wisdom practice, the ocean can’t be an It. To borrow Buber’s language, if we “observe it” instead of “heeding it” and “instead of receiving it, [utilize] it” then we’ve missed the most substantial, life-giving gifts it has to offer.
The ocean gave and gives us life on this planet. Gratitude before the giver seems not only polite but prudent. I’m intimately connected to it in my quotidian everyday, and it infuses me with a sense of connection, of belonging. The ocean is water with life in it and so am I. There it is easier for me to feel part of a whole, a You among the You. And its vast horizons and geological age are plenty close enough to eternal for my tiny mind. Especially when, fingers cramping and pen in hand, I lean back to stretch, close my eyes and see waves undulating towards me.
Interview: Lena G
To listen to the interview, scroll to the Media Player at the bottom of this page.
What would give you the courage to quit a good job, one you had worked hard to get, and always thought you wanted but discovered maybe wasn’t very good for you? And what happens when a German structural engineer reaches for surfing to help heal a broken heart and discovers an altogether healthier way of seeing and her living life?
Before learning to surf "I was the same. I spent a lot of money for things I actually don't need to impress people I don't like."
~Lena G
Interview Transcript
My name is Maia Dery.
This episode is part of a series called the Waves to Wisdom Interviews.
The project is a simple one. I seek out people I admire, surfers with what look to me to be ocean-centered wisdom practices. I ask them if they’d be willing to share a surf session or two, and then, after we’ve ridden some waves together, talk to me about their oceanic habits, surfing, work, meaning, and anything else that comes up.
What would give you the courage to quit a good job, one you had worked hard to get, and always thought you wanted but discovered maybe wasn’t very good for you? And what happens when a German structural engineer reaches for surfing to help heal a broken heart and discovers an altogether healthier way of seeing and her living life?
Lena: Oh my god, I remember these wipe-outs, I thought I could never do it, and then after two hours, so hard work, then you catch a wave and you’re standing on your surfboard and you think like, “Oh my god, I can do it! It’s possible.” and you just have to believe in it and don’t give up and this is the same in life now when I have moments where I’m struggling, like the bad things happen, I’m so sad, I’m lost and I remember surfing, and I know, no, it’s gonna be good, there will be, don’t, don’t look to the broken wave, to the whitewater, look, look to the horizon, in the ocean and there will be more, so many more green beautiful clean waves coming for you and you just have to wait and be patient
Lena and I found one another by accident, in the waves of Nosara, Costa Rica. We developed the sort of fast, thrilling friendship that comes from sharing passion for a beloved activity and intense experiences, both beautiful and challenging. The time we spent getting to know one another trading and often sharing waves in the gentle Pacific swells of that idyllic tropical surf break was inspiring and Lena’s story of crafting balance in her body and life taught me a great deal. I hope you learn something valuable as well.
Maia: If you are comfortable with it you tell us your name and your age and how long you’ve been surfing.
Lena: OK, my name is Lena, I’m now 33 years old I’m a Pisces, I think that’s why I love water and I am surfing since 6 years.
Maia: 6 years, OK and you are from Germany?
Lena: I am from Germany, yeah.
Maia: And we are speaking, we’re having this beautiful conversation in a magical setting [oh my goodness, yeah], will you tell whoever’s listening a little bit about where we are?
Lena: Yeah, so right now we’re sitting, actually, in the jungle, the sun is shining the temperature, sometimes I forget that it’s the middle of January, it’s so cold right now in Germany and we’re sitting, we’re almost don’t wear, like, anything it’s hot but it just feels wonderful on your skin and when I look up, like I see the sun shining through all this lush nature, it’s a simple place, it’s a little juice bar in the jungle and it just feels wonderful, it’s paradise.
Maia: It is paradise, isn’t it? Um, okay and this morning we surfed for quite a good session.
Lena: Oh my goodness, I didn’t expect that, like I was walking in the beach, I love to walk on the beach in the morning, it’s so peaceful, like when you walk outside, it’s warm, like 6 o’clock there is like the first sunlight and you walk to the beach and you see the sun rise and yeah, it was windy the morning but when you paddle out it was, the wave was small but so much fun.
Maia: It was so much fun.
Lena: Oh my goodness, and it just got better and better and so nice too, that we share this moment.
Maia: It really was, wasn’t it? And the moment we just shared I think bears repeating which is that I’ve been fiddling with this audio equipment for a minute and I swore I was putting the record setting on the right thing but I just couldn’t figure out why couldn’t hear anything through these headphones and you said, “Are those headphones plugged in?” In fact, they weren’t! Which is maybe a good time to talk what you do for a living.
Lena: Yeah um, actually that was a coincidence because I don’t know much about technique.
Maia: Yes, but there is something about, are the pieces fitting together right this year like a good introduction to the rest of your life when you’re not surfing.
Lena: Absolutely, I am a structural engineer at home, so I have a very serious job yeah, I love my job it’s a lot of calculation and math and right now I don’t think much about it but I know when I get home I will enjoy it again. So my life is completely different in Germany but I love to have this balance in my life.
Maia: You are here for how long?
Lena: I’m here for 4 month, so it’s just the best time to escape the cold winter in Germany. I don’t mind the cold so much but it’s so dark, yeah it’s dark and cold and rainy, so I decided to live during the winter here in Costa Rica for 4 months.
Maia: And how many years have you done that?
Lena: I started, you know it was a process. I came here the first, it’s my fifth time to Nosara, Costa Rica, I came here the first time 6 years ago only for vacation, for two weeks, and I fell in love with surfing and this place, so I came back a second time, only for two weeks, and then a third time for two and a half months, and now last season for four month, and this season for four month, and I want to keep doing this.
Maia: So, how does your life allow you, you are a structural engineer and I don’t know if you have this stereotype in Germany but in America we often think of surfers as bums [yeah] and structural engineers, we don’t think of as bums so how do you work out that balance?
Lena: Yeah, it was like it came to me, it was, I always, I enjoyed studying engineering a lot, a lot and then I started working for this company I always wanted to work for and I finally made it to work for this company but then I just found I’m working nonstop. I’m so, so hard with myself so, I forced, I wanted, I want to be good like, I always wanted to be perfect and do things perfect, but then I found after awhile, you know this is not healthy, so I need some balance in my life and I worked for this company three years and then I felt, everyone did that in Germany so it’s like common if you work really hard, so all of the people around me did the same, so they work really hard, um there was a lot of competition in my office and I felt a lot of pressure that I didn’t realize that it’s wrong, I just thought it’s normal to live like that. And then, just, things happened I, I was in a relationship for 11 years, and we broke up and then I got laid off from my job so…
Maia: All at the same time?
Lena: All in one year [within one year] that was such a hard time for me. I was so sad at I remember it was winter, it was cold and I, I cried for I think for three months, like I remember was taking my bicycle to work, and cried and at work I distracted myself and, and then at night I woke up, it was like a nightmare, it was, I didn’t know what, what’s happening next in my life, my life just changed in one second and I lost everything.
Maia: It’s the worst thing, so disorienting
Lena: I was so sad and by this time I felt because I have surfed before and I knew how I felt like being in the water and oh my god, surfing just made me so happy, on these two trips before with my ex-boyfriend to Costa Rica and the first thing I did, like, I booked a flight to Morocco, in the sun to go surfing and when I was sitting in the plane I remember when I felt so much happiness I was sitting in the water and in this week I didn’t cry all. I sent my ex-boyfriend a message that I am just so happy because, of course, at the break up was he left me, but it was also hard for, for him to see me being so sad because of course he still felt love for me [of course] so I send him the message, you know, don’t worry about me, I’m surfing and I just feel so much happiness and I even like, I’m thankful for all the time we had together and he brought me into surfing. So, I’m just thankful for the amazing 11 years we had together and it’s ok now I will make it and I knew I felt so much strength, like sitting in the water, and it was like the moment when okay surfing now is part of my life, I need it in my life so I came back from Morocco, I booked my second flight to Morocco and this year I went all my vacation I went like always surfing, I went six times, 10 days surfing, I spent a lot of money but I didn’t care. And then I went to my boss and I told him I just have hard time right now and I need this time off, I need to go surfing because it’s so good for my soul and because I lost everything I was so brave I felt, I was like okay, I’ll just do it, and he was, because this is really not common in Germany, he didn’t understand this like, “Why? You’re such a good engineer and you work so hard why do you do this you don’t need this.” and I remember yeah, because he has big passion with this Harley, with riding a Harley Davison so I told him, “When someone takes my surfboard it’s the same when someone takes your Harley”, so he’s like, “Ok, do it and go for two and a half month and find your happiness.” and, yeah, then I came back to Costa Rica because that’s the place where I learned surfing and I knew I have friends here, and I traveled through Costa Rica, and then I spent the last four weeks here at this place where we’re sitting right now. And the last days I was sitting on the beach, I remember just like it was yesterday, I was sitting there and I was like, watching the waves, I was watching the sunset, it was the last sunset in Costa Rica, and I thought, “I live the simple life here, surfing and eating healthy and I don’t do much I, I rest in a hammock, and I was sitting there, and I was like I don’t need more.” This is like, I felt so happy if I have would have to wish that, I didn’t know what I would have at that point, it just felt perfect.
Maia: You had everything you needed and everything you wanted.
Lena: Everything, everything, yeah. So I took the flight back to Germany and on this flight I decided I will come here again and this time I want to live like this I want to spend like the next winter here in Costa Rica again surfing. So I went back. I, I waited four weeks until I talked to my boss and then I told him, um, that I have to come back and that I will do this again and he was upset. He said, like, “No, not again, like…” yeah. I didn’t, he really didn’t understand and he told me, yeah, if you want to do this again you have to quit and then I said “OK then I quit!”
Maia: LAUGH
Lena: I will quit. He was like, “No, no! Ok if you really, if you think this is the thing you want to do, everyone needs to follow his dreams.” And so I did it again and I worked these 8 months and I enjoy my job so much more than before. The first three years in my first job I was so stressed and after surfing it was like, no like work is not everything, and whatever happens there will be a way, yeah. In in Germany no one understands it’s so funny because yeah, here I am that serious structural engineer, at home people think I’m crazy and I’m the hippy breaking out of the society and it’s so funny.
Maia: The extreme in both communities.
Lena: Yeah, really it feels so funny for me, yeah, before like three years ago I would have never done this my job was like, I was so stuck in my job, like I was like no, I need to work and this is like the most important part of my life after, surfing no my job was not the most important part of my life anymore it was like, surfing, still of course I need to make money and… yeah after I got into surfing my job didn’t have this value anymore this big and I think that’s, this big meaning, because I think this is the most important thing what I learned in life to have a balance, if I would be only, if I would only surf the whole time I would, it wouldn’t be that magical anymore, you need like different things in your life in my work, I was like, this is the only thing I have so I got like stuck in this but if you have something else in life that makes you happy, you’re more relaxed about each part because if you lose one you have another.
Maia: And I just want to say that this no one can see you but that was such a beautiful embodiment of those expressions when you’re talking about only having the one thing and your fists are clenched and then you’re talking about freedom and balance your hands are open and receptive, yeah.
Lena: Yeah, I felt this for a couple of years, I was so tired and now I feel, oh my god, I’m, I’m ready for everything, nothing can scare me anymore.
Maia: And do you think that surfing has helped you with courage?
Lena: Oh yeah, a lot, a lot, oh my God all these wipe outs, you’re sitting in the water and sometimes it is so peaceful and quiet and the water’s so soft and this is like the perfect idea of surfing when the water is soft, it’s beautiful, no wind, the waves are glassy and you catch a wave and it feels like flying and, but then there are days, oh my goodness, it’s stormy, there’s a lot of current you have so many waves crashing on you, it’s so hard to paddle out. You, the waves are so hard to catch and you have all these bad wipeouts and you feel like sometimes you’re drowning especially when you’re learning, you’re like, oh my god, I remember these wipe-outs, I thought I could never do it, and then after two hours, so hard work, then you catch a wave and you’re standing on your surfboard and you think like, “Oh my god, I can do it! It’s possible.” and you just have to believe in it and don’t give up and this is the same in life now when I have moments where I’m struggling, like bad things happen, I’m so sad, I’m lost and I remember surfing, and I know, no, it’s gonna be good, there will be, don’t, don’t look to the broken wave, to the whitewater, look, look to the horizon, in the ocean and there will be more, so many more green beautiful clean waves coming for you and you just have to wait and be patient. And I had this in the beginning a lot, I had this one wave that made me happy the rest of the day, I forgot about these two hours struggling, it was just this couple of seconds, it’s so crazy, it made me so happy that it was like, I couldn’t stop smiling the whole day I was like walking around, I thought like, people think I’m crazy but, they don’t know why I am smiling. (19:20)
Maia: it’s really true isn’t it [It’s so true] that this pure joy that’s so difficult to translate to people who don’t share it
Lena: So difficult. I was, I was here, I had weeks at the hostel I share this room with five other girls, and I couldn’t sleep at night because I was so excited for the next day to go surfing. I was laying in bed, I couldn’t, because I did this amazing sunrise surfs in the morning and then at night the sunset, I was sitting in the water until it was dark, I couldn’t see anything any more, I was, “Okay I can’t see I have to go out now there will be another day.” and then I went back, I had dinner and was so tired, I went to bed at 7 or 8 o’clock and then I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited. It was like being a child, like before Christmas, like the morning when you are allowed to open the presents, and I had this for a week. And the next morning I was so tired, it was like, “You need to sleep.” and then I went to paddle out again, I had these amazing waves.
Maia: So this is now your 5th year as a surfer
Lena: My sixth year
Maia: 6th year
Lena: Yeah but as a surfer I would say my 3rd year because before I just, I tried surfing yeah but yes it
Maia: So there was a transition… Can you describe the transition from “I went surfing.” to “I became a surfer?”
Lena: In the beginning I went for vacation, to go surfing. It was just an activity to do, like ok let’s go to Costa Rica to try surfing, but then there was this moment in my life where surfing became a part of me. It was like I realized, okay now I cannot live without surfing any more, I cannot imagine to live without surfing anymore. This happiness, I never felt before–it became such a big part in my life.
Maia: It’s the magic of surfing
Lena: The magic of surfing, no one understands if you’re not a surfer.
Maia: At home people asked me what are you doing the whole day and and then “You are not like bored after four months?” and I’m like, “No every moment in the water is so different, so different and I get up at 5 o’clock it’s still dark and I’m so excited to start my day.
Maia: Being excited to start your day sounds like one way to describe, not just a great surf trip, but a good life. I know so many people who feel trapped by jobs instead of feeling fulfilled by meaningful, purposeful work. I wondered about the set of circumstances that had allowed Lena to craft this existence for herself in which she had important work but she also understood how crucial it is to get away from it.
Lena: I quit my job, I came back here for four months and I was so sure, I was like not worried about to find a job again because actually if you start doing this you realize that this is possible like, yeah before you’re scared because no one does it and but if you try and if you lose this fear and with surfing, I really lost the fear, you realize, yeah, everything is possible. So I came back here and in this year another guy did contact me and he asked me, “Hey Lena” I knew him from the, my first job, he was like “Lena I just open a new office, you want to work for me?”
And I was like, “No, right now I am in Costa Rica surfing. I quit my job but I really like this office and I know they will hire me again.” I remember like this moment it was like almost exactly one year ago. It’s so amazing because we’re sitting like here now in this juice bar. At this time I was laying in the hammock at the hostel, where I’m living and because this guy kept contacting me, I thought no, I’m happy with my old job, I will, I’m sure I can go back there so I just gonna try something and I sent, I wrote a really, really long email where I was completely honest about myself, I was honest to myself. I applied for a job but I didn’t pretend to be someone, I just was myself and was like I started with the sentence that part of my life is like surfing. And I talk about myself, the person I actually am because, when I’m in my job I’m really focused, I’m concentrated, I love my job, and but I need this balance in my life and I’m only good in a job or in something if it has the balance and I tried, I told him, yeah, “If you want to hire me you have to trust me and I will, I need surfing in my life so you have to let me go during the winter four months.”
And really this is like not common at all in Germany it’s like I was writing this email and I thought like if he gets, reads the email he thinks I’m crazy. So, but I just took the risk because I was sure I can come back to my other job any time. And, I know, because I learned this over the years, like when you work too hard you get sick and you get exhausted and you don’t have the energy anymore and if you take this break sometimes in your life you you, you can, it’s like, like a plant it needs like water and, and sun to grow, you need this rest in your life.
So, I wrote this email and when I send this and I remember this, oh god, okay even if he thinks I’m cra… I don’t know if this working but I’m just gonna send this email now. And then I was in a rush because I was, I met friends here at this place in the Juice Bar at Harmony Hotel and I was sitting here and it was 50 minutes after I sent the email and I checked my emails and I didn’t expect it but I got an email from him and the two other bosses and they said, “Lena, we are so happy to hire you. Of course we accept everything you’re asking for. We’re like, we will send you the contract right away just sign it and then the rest we manage in Germany. And I really almost cried. It was like a moment in my life where I thought “Oh my god, I really, I was so honest. I just asked for what I wanted 100% and I got it. And this is possible. And now I can live the life I really want to live.” And I, I spent the rest of the time here, the last day I was sitting on the beach watching the sunset and I went home, I was flying home, and I was not sad because I knew I can come back and I started my new job three days later like I never enjoyed my work before, that much like I did like last year with this like freedom now. It’s amazing [wow] it all came through surfing, really all of all of it
Maia: Can you talk about because this is a recurrent theme in in all of the cultural artifacts and literature of surfing that I could find is this way that surfing gives you a sense of freedom [yeah, yeah]. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Lena: Yeah, it’s how can I describe it? Like the, like surfing is itself, it’s freedom. Like, you’re sitting in the water, you feel the power of nature, especially here, you feel the warm water on your body. It’s like meditation, you look to the ocean, you forget everything, you forget everything: what is important, what bothers you, what makes you sad. And you look at all the waves coming, you’re sitting a lot when you’re surfing, you’re sitting a lot it’s not that you’re like surfing a waves all the time. You meet like, you see people like yourself, and with your friends, you smile at, everyone seems to be so happy in the lineup and then you finally, you work so hard and this is like the part that describes the freedom that you sometimes you, you have to work hard for something, but then you catch a wave, and you’re flying, and you know you can make it and, am, yeah, to be to be free means you have to be you have to be bold, you have to be brave and, and that’s what surfing really gives you, like yeah. That’s like freedom.
Maia: So do you have a background as an athlete as a child? Were you athletic?
Lena: Not at all, not at all. I was not sporty at all I hated sport. It was just friends who said, ”Oh, come running with me.” And it was exhausting, I didn’t have fun in the beginning and then my body felt like something was changing and my body started to need it and this time when I think back I didn’t eat healthy I didn’t do any sport, I was sitting, I wasted so much time in front of the computer, in front of the TV. I thought I didn’t know there was something else I didn’t know about it because I never tried. It was like, no doing sport is too exhausting and don’t want to do it. And there’s not a moment where you feel like now it’s changing it’s like I can’t even tell when it changed. But my body needed exercise and I tried surfing and you are successful even if you’re not sporty you, you have this big board, it’s like a boat, and the surf instructor pushes you in a wave and you crawl up, you stand up but then you feel like this, “Wow, I can do it!” and then you are starting to surf and you feel you’re getting tired so fast. So then I started thinking about it. I wanted to, I want to do more surfing and for this I need to eat healthy and I need to do more sport and then I though, “What is good like to be better at surfing?” and then I thought, “Okay swimming is really good!” and my dad tried to get me into swimming since years. He always bought me the season pass for my birthday and I never used it but when I start surfing it was like now I gonna learn on how to swim freestyle. Like crawling style and I could never do that. So I started watching YouTube videos, so funny I learned swimming by watching YouTube videos [wow]. So I went to the pool every day and try and try and then I learned it and then I realized no it’s not that I’m, I cannot do it. Everyone can do it even, like I was 25 at this time in and
Maia: And you had not felt strong as a child?
Lena: Not at all I had back problems I got sick a lot so I always went to this um physiotherapist and I had to do this boring exercise, I hated it but when I started surfing I had so much motivation. I started doing yoga. The first half a year I hated yoga I was like “Oh, this is like so exhausting, it’s so hard but I want to keep doing it because I want to be better at surfing.” so I kept like doing it and then my body like changed and my back was suddenly so strong, I felt so much healthier, now I’m 32 I feel so much healthier than, so much stronger than when I was 22 and when I was 22 I thought like, “Oh my God when I’m 30 I will be old, I will be sad and will be not sporty at all” and now I feel so fit, I changed my diet. And so my body learned so much, like here, I ate all these fruits like really cheap simple basic food but it makes you feel much better. I felt something changing in the body and like through yoga and surfing I felt so much more my body. I listen to it and I realized, now I feel so bad what I did to my body like 15 years ago in this age you don’t think about it, you think your body is like, you only have one body and everything you put in your body is what you are made out of.
Now, since I’m surfing I don’t get sick anymore since it’s like, the whole combination, it’s like also this balance in my job that I’m not, I don’t have stress anymore, even if I have the stress but it doesn’t feel like stress anymore.
Maia: This idea: stress that doesn’t feel like stress, seems crucial to Lena’s story. Her job is still demanding, still time sensitive and, like most jobs, performance based,. I asked her to explain how surfing had helped her transform work stress from a negative experience into something else.
When you’re surfing you, you follow a lot your intuitions. You don’t have much time to think about. You are in this moment, a wave is coming, everything is moving and you have to decide in this moment and you have to trust yourself and you feel this fear and if you don’t go for it you will never catch a wave. And when I’m at home and I was an engineer I was like okay I have so much time to think about anything when I was for example when I was writing an email to an important client I was thinking about this email so many times. I wrote it again I changed it, it was like I was so scared to do something wrong and since I’m surfing, I’m so much faster with my decisions and this makes it so much more efficient my work. With surfing I learned, no just relax breathe in breathe out and just go for it and take the risk maybe you do mistakes now but if you panic it doesn’t help you, you don’t improve. And I felt so much more efficient since I work like that and I have so much more success. Yeah mistakes happen but you never reach 100% perfection it’s not even possible and in surfing also you will you have to, like you wipe out you do this mistake, sometimes you, you take the wrong wave, but in surfing you learn that if you do mistakes it’s not they’re not mistakes you just learn. When you panic you wipe out [every time whether you are in the water or not] exactly
Lena: One guy told me if you are scared just breathe in really slowly and really deep and breathe out and then be committed and go for it and if you’re 100% committed you make, you do it, and it feels so easy, you to just have to trust yourself a lot when you’re surfing [you really do, don’t you] Oh my goodness. [Yes] Oh my goodness.
Maia: It seems like, it still feels to me as though miracles happen all the time for example last night it was, the waves were not big for here, but they seemed big to me because I took out a very small board for myself, I’m trying to learn how to ride a short board, because there are some days I prefer long boarding but there some days that are not conducive to longboarding and I don’t want to miss any days. So, I’m trying to learn short boarding and and so I have this tiny, what to me as this tiny little board out there and there were a couple of times when I just decided I was going to go for it and I still can’t predict what is gonna be a good wave or not and I, I run pretty frightened by nature, I’m a fearful person so I, I think I, I miss a lot of waves that could work out because they look impossible, [same for me] so but last night I took off on a couple of waves that I was pretty sure were close-outs where the wave breaks all once and there’s nowhere to go, I almost always wipe out those, and I, it was the strangest thing because I went from this moment of, “OK, I’m probably going to die” to “What just happened? That worked!” and in between was this and I, blank is not the right word but it’s it’s almost as though there’s this emptiness [yeah, exactly] where your body is just doing these things and you’re beholden to it in a beautiful way, it’s got this capacity, and it’s it’s in tune with this force in a way that doesn’t even feel like you’re driving the car is just sort of happens.
Lena: Yeah, exactly. I want to say something about this being committed in a wave, that you go for it and that I have these, I had actually my the best waves together with friends. I want to talk about friends like surfing together with friends because this makes surfing so special. Surfing alone can be, like, boring, you want to share moments with friends and this is like also in your life you want to share your life with someone and I have these moments where a big wave was coming and I wouldn’t have gone alone and, actually, I went alone, it was just the person, the friend beside me who said, “Go, Girl! Go for it! Go girl.” and I went for it and I didn’t think it would be possible. Alone I would have definitely pulled back and then I took the wave and I made it and I was like, “Oh my God. I can do it.” and when you’re alone, when you are paddling for a wave and you know you have to be, you have to be, you have to be bold, have to be brave to go for the waves to catch the wave and you make it sometimes. But it’s so good if you have company and you support, they support you, and in this moment you trust them. You, you think like, “Alone, I would have never gone for this wave” but because you have this friend who’s telling you, Go, and you trust this person 100% because the moment when you take a big waves is scary and you have the feeling of, okay I’m gonna die or I’m gonna make it and it’s so crazy how you can trust people and this is so amazing.
Maia: It really is I’ve had that experience multiple times myself I have a friend I often surface at home who I trust in in all the ways just an utterly trustworthy, honorable beautiful human being and I will frequently ask her when a big wave is coming, “Do you think I can make this?” and I would even asked the question if she weren’t there I just would think, “I can’t make this.” But if she says yes, I’m willing to give it a shot, yeah.
Lena: And then you make it.
Maia: And then you make it, Yeah it’s just, or even if you don’t it’s okay you know you could have because she’s right, yeah, just something happened.
Lena: It’s just so amazing, it’s so special, you you you you think you have these limits but then you try, you, you pass the limit, and you know, you realize you can do it you can do. And it is the same in life and you work at your job if you are a team so much more is possible.
Maia: Would you, would you mind telling the story on tape about the complicated drawing and plan he found the mistake in?
Lena: Okay, yeah actually it’s like I’m, I’m working as a proof engineer and that means a regular engineer does all the calculations of the building that is designed by an architect and if we have a public building in Germany, a proof engineer has to check the calculations of the engineer and I got this calculation, it was like a big folder, like the engineer I know he worked four weeks to do the calculation of this really complicated building with a lot of walls and he built a 3D model and I got this big folder and I was like, Oh my goodness this is so much!” It was like too much information and I had to check this, these calculations. Couple of years ago I would have built the same model in my computer but I thought, “No just lean back think about it first.” And I completely simplified the building in my mind. I thought okay I’ll just delete all these little walls that won’t get much load and I focus on the three important walls and I made my calculation to check these calculations on only two pages. I think he gave me 200. And I did this calculation in one day by first thinking about it, simplifying the model, and I found a really big mistake and this building would have collapsed if I wouldn’t have found this mistake. Sometimes you think, too complicated if you have the time if you have the time you make life so complicated and you have all these little walls you you want to consider in your life and but no focus on the basic important things that make you happy and you don’t need much more.
Maia: Could you talk a little bit about how your relationship to possessions has changed
Lena: I see this a lot in Stuttgart because the city I’m from there is a lot of is a lot of consume like a lot of [consumerism?] consumerism. There’s a lot of big industry like fancy cars, Mercedes and Porsche in Germany in Stuttgart so you see a lot of fancy cars driving around and you are in, I lived in this world where you work hard and then you have like this little spare time where you spend a lot of money to spoil yourself actually you think like, Okay, now I have like one hour time so I’m going to this fancy restaurant and I wanna spoil myself. I spend all this money I buy these things that make that make me happy and I want to drive a fancy car and I was the same I spent a lot of money for things I actually don’t need to impress people I don’t like. It’s so funny because my friends they don’t care how I look like, what I wear, they just like to spend time with me. I don’t have to impress them at all. And since I have more time I live different. Since I have this part-time job, I make this money but the interesting thing is the end of the year I don’t have less money. When I’m at home taking my bicycle, I don’t have a car, I’m so lucky that is possible in Stuttgart I can go grocery shopping on my bicycle. And I enjoy it, I hate sitting in a car. It’s such a waste of time! And like I save money and I enjoy it more and I had this job offer from Porsche for being a project manager. I thought in this moment it is way too much challenging for me and this guy said “When you get this job you we offer you a Porsche car!” And I looked at him and said, “No I don’t want to drive this car. I see all these Porsche cars stuck in traffic every day on the way to work. I take my bicycle through the park and meet all these other people on bicycles who wave at me, who smile at me, the atmosphere in the park in the morning is so nice I breathe in this fresh air, I don’t want to sit in this car in the traffic.” And he started laughing because I think I was the first person he met who didn’t want to have a Porsche car in Stuttgart.
Maia: One of the things that I have noticed about surfing and one of the really one of the reasons that I wanted to start this project is that I believe that being in the water together, that sharing that love in that, it’s an inherently intimate setting to be in the water like that, that it allows people to form bonds so rapidly. You really can get close very quickly if you are of a mind to and you find somebody you like and are inspired by and whose company you enjoy and that certainly I feel like that happened for us and I’m so grateful [yeah] really quite good.
Lena: We are just sitting there and looking at each other and you don’t have to say anything, you just feel it and, it’s like you can’t explain it.
I remember exactly when I met you– it’s such an unbelievable feeling to meet someone new in the water and share this feeling and a wave is coming in between so you catch a wave and then paddle back out and you sit together and talk about this moment. You’re so in the moment. I don’t know sometimes when you’re sitting in a café and meet someone you’re so distracted of things around you. But if you’re in the water you’re really like in this moment so much more. It feels like more intense like meeting someone in the water.
Maia: It does, doesn’t it? Yes I think you are absolutely right that it’s easier to bring your full attention to that moment, in part because the wave demands it, and so you’re, even in that short span of time you’re, you’re practicing– careful attention so you don’t get hurt, and you have a good experience, and then you bring that to hopefully to the other relationships that you have in the water
and certainly that’s not true for everybody there’re plenty of people who don’t, don’t practice mindfulness when it comes to the other folks in the water and that’s that’s one of the things that makes meeting somebody like you so special is that we don’t all, even in the water we don’t all wear our heart on out sleeve, on our little lycra or neoprene sleeves in that way.
Lena: Exactly and there are different kind of surfers and of course there are a lot of young guys, young kids around us who are totally focused on surfing and they don’t care, they don’t want to talk, there are different kind of surfers for sure and some they just want to go out there for an hour and catch as many waves as possible I really enjoy like being with people in the water and of course because you are a woman you are, yeah, there are not that many women your age I have.
Maia: Yeah, there aren’t.
Lena: Yeah, it’s true. This is like my biggest dream I always admire women that are older than me because I want to keep surfing until I die.
Maia: The interesting part of the aging process for me is that surfing has just dissolved all of the lines of the boxes and the categories and it’s, not as though age is meaningless it’s profoundly meaningful and I have as I’ve gotten closer to death than to birth it focuses your mind I think Jung was right when you round a corner and you begin to realize that death is did you do realize that it becomes this real thing is kind of confabulation – comes to staying with his just if you’re doing things in a way that is right for you, what it does is it re-minds you, it puts your mind back in your body over and over again and for me at least it’s real that this body is not forever you are not forever you become more mindful of the and in that process you begin to understand, if you’re lucky and you have the opportunity, you begin to understand how much choice you have and the thing that gave me the opportunity to realize that is surfing. You realize, ok, yes I’m, I’m relatively old, I’m probably not going to live to be a hundred and that doesn’t mean any of the things that I thought it meant, none of that, it doesn’t mean things in my mind, it doesn’t mean the things in my life, and it sure as heck doesn’t mean things in my body, that I thought it was gonna mean and… there’s this famous surfer Jerry Lopez, Mr. Pipeline, who’s older than I am, 10-15 years I’m not sure exactly when he was born and he was quoted in this popular documentary about surfing called Step into Liquid and he said “The real journey as a surfer doesn’t begin until the second 20 years, the first 20 years is just figuring out whether or not you like it.” And I heard that and I got it. I have it in my marrow like this, this 20 years is to learn the language, the second 20 years, which for me will begin at 60, that’s about writing the poetry [yeah] and I think when you begin to engage in any form of, of expression, or ritual, or worship or all of the things that surfing isn’t quite but it but it somehow approximates, when you start late in life it’s different than if you just grow up with it. It has different lessons to teach and I’m so grateful, although if I had a choice I would start earlier, because I would be a more beautiful surfer you too?
Lena: Yeah, Me too. Like I wish I would have surfed earlier.
Maia: Absolutely and at the same time I know that I wouldn’t be learning the same things [yeah] and I wouldn’t have come at it the same way as when I began to learn how to surf it was such a slow physical process for me I couldn’t get enough hours in the water and have you to read all of the books [yeah]. What started for me as this, it felt like this selfish hunger you have just I just have to feed myself, I need more of this, has turned into this new it, it feels like a calling and I’m I am not you know, sort of a theistic religious person but it really does, I feel called by, and the closest thing I can say is the ocean, I feel called by the ocean to somehow take this incredible gift this, this profound gift this abundant experience that I get to partake of, I feel called to figure out ways to tell about it, to pass it on.
Lena: Exactly: this feeling what I have now I want everyone to feel like this I want everyone to feel like this I didn’t know either and no one knows who doesn’t surf, doesn’t know what feeling it gives you an it’s like when I see the people at home I want to take them and shake them and tell them everything about my life right now and inspire them.
Maia: As an educator I struggle to put my students in touch with how profoundly they can affect someone else by just being authentic to themselves but it it happens over and over again. You make a decision that’s right for you even though everybody else around you is pushing you in another direction and, and that somehow becomes its own form of service [yeah].
Lena: I worked in this company, it was the second job I had, I worked for them and everyone in this office went to, they took the car to get to the office, the train to get to the office and I started, I took my bicycle, and I did this exercise every morning actually I went on my way to work I took my bicycle to the swimming pool, I was swimming there some laps and took a shower and then I took my bicycle to work and I arrived at work with so much energy, happiness I arrived there, I didn’t need a coffee, I was full of energy to start my day, like Monday morning and my colleagues they just saw me being so happy and I saw in their face they were thinking about it, “What does she do it makes her so happy?” And they realized that, “She just takes a bicycle every morning to work.” so my colleagues started taking, they bought a bicycle for themselves and started taking their bicycle to work and I also, also I cook a lot at home I cook a lot of vegetables I feel like so much lighter in the afternoon, before in the past and I felt so tired and now since I eat healthier I have more energy during the day and they saw this and they started cooking and now we, then we start being a group of girls actually who took their bicycle to work started eating healthier and the other people saw it and they started copying it and one day one girl came to me and so I didn’t say anything but in the year she changed her life she had a lot of overweight and she came to me one day and she said, “Lena, I have to tell you something and I think, I feel like because of you you inspired me so much I lost in one year 30 pounds. [wow] She said I saw you, I saw you living this healthy life I saw your happiness and I realize I want to be like you and I have to change something in my life. And she also bought this bicycle and she drove to work and she said, “Lena, on rainy days when I really didn’t felt like biking I thought about you, I woke up in the morning I thought, I know Lena’s going to take a bicycle always goes in her bicycle so I will do it.’” That was an amazing moment for me. [wow] And I have all these… and I always start crying but it makes me so happy because I feel so happy with my life and I love to inspire people because I think everyone should be that happy and so it’s amazing to inspire people and I got inspired a lot to not that I am the person I’m now because I was just lazy and sporty girl sitting in front of the TV and I didn’t know that they are something else exist in this world.
Maia: And then you find it and you pass it on and nothing feels better, there’s nothing better in the world are so happy right now it’s just the most beautiful thing it really is.
Maia: Providing inspirational, transformative experiences is central to the mission of Waves to Wisdom. To learn more about our retreats where we use learning to surf as a means to guide you into a powerful capacity to envision and create, a more effective, fulfilled version of your self at work and in life visit wavestowisdom.com.
Interview: Jess Ponting Part 2
“From an educational perspective there’s so many different angles that you can look at through the lens of surfing… it’s such a fun and rewarding thing to do that puts you in touch with so many things. It can be used as a lens to understand all kinds of different things and it breathes life into that otherwise lifeless study of stuff.”
Dr. Jess Ponting
Interview: Jess Ponting Part 1
“Putting… theory and knowledge from the development world together with surfing, it struck me that there would be ways to make this an industry where everybody could benefit from the spread of surfing around the world…”
Dr. Jess Ponting
Interview: Andrea Kabwasa
“Surfing became my everything… my religion, my peace of mind, my ego checker,… my happiness meter, … it’s really everything for me. But that doesn’t mean that I’m like a surf rat and I’m only hanging at the beach all day, it’s just, the surfing frame of mind extends outside of the actual act of surfing.”
Andrea Kabwasa
Transcript
Interview Date: June 2016
My name is Maia Dery. This interview with longboard surfer Andrea Kabwasa is the first in a series called Waves to Wisdom. The project is a simple one. I seek out people I admire, surfers with what look to me to be ocean centered wisdom practices, ask them if they’d be willing to share a surf session or two, and then, after we ride some waves together, talk to me about their oceanic habits, surfing, work, love, meaning, and anything else that comes up. Andrea was generous enough to agree to two surf sessions in Malibu, the Eden of modern surfing if ever there was one. The sessions we shared were a little bit terrifying but magical. The interview was even better. Welcome to Waves to Wisdom.
Andrea: My name’s Andrea Kabwasa and I’m 47 and I’ve been surfing, I dunno, about, I dunno, what is that about 15, 14, 15 years or something like that.
Maia: And we are in Malibu right next to the beach and we surfed this morning a building swell, [mm hm] pretty exciting [laugh] and uh I don’t have a lot of experience with big crowds and it was unsurprisingly [yeah] well populated. Beautiful wave– you’ve been surfing Malibu for most of your time as a surfer or did it take you a few years to get there?
Andrea: Yeah I been surfing there maybe about 12,12 or 13 years yeah quite a while.
Maia: How long did it take you to get comfortable with the crowd?
Andrea: Oh, I accepted it right off the bat.
Maia: Right away okay [LAUGH]. So you were a full grown adult when you started surfing?
Andrea: Yes I was.
Maia: What, what led you take it up?
Andrea: It was something I thought about when I was a child and I remember watching surfers. My aunt, my aunt used to take us to the beach and I would see the surfers. And I do remember saying I want to do that one day. So you know fast-forward through life, and all kinds of stuff and I had one of these epiphanies kinds of deals where I questioned what I wanted to do. Realized I could do anything I wanted, what did I want to do and I went to sleep and then when I woke up, surfing came to mind.
Maia: As Andrea shared her story with me, of course, I couldn’t help look for overlap in our oceanic autobiographies. Like me she’d had a childhood desire, made her living in that moment as a teacher, and had a story whose plot was woven of the warp of loss and weft of waves. It was my 40th birthday had prompted me to finally get a board in the water. Now, ten years later, I was somewhere in the process of dealing with my own loss, my first really, truly, devastatingly broken heart. It was the end of an ill-advised love that had turned out, inevitably, to not be what I’d wished it was. An obvious failure to see clearly. But now I could do almost anything I wanted and what I wanted was, among other things, to surf with and listen well to Andrea. And to bring what I knew would be wise words to someone else who might need them more than I did.
Andrea: I got up and went surfing. I told my mom I was going to go surfing cause I was living with my mom then and she basically said, “ Go! That’s great!” [Beautiful] So, that helped a lot [ok] cause if she would’ve said, “Ah, don’t do that don’t waste your time, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But um her initial instinctual positive reaction was like “Oh, ok yeah I’m gonna do that then.”
Maia: Good MOM! And so did you take a lesson?
Andrea: Yeah, I took a lesson and uh, yeah, fell in love right away.
Maia: Tell me about those 2 instructors, those first few lessons.
Andrea: Those first few lessons, those started off on land, right? Me having this epiphany that I really, I’m a grown-up. I’m not a kid I’m a grown-up and I’m free after leaving a pretty bad relationship and getting the courage to leave because it was abusive so mentally and everything. So, having the courage to do that and you know licking my wounds at my mom’s trying to figure out what I’m gonna do with my life. You know, it something happened where I just realize that, “Wait a minute. I’m free and I really can do whatever the hell I wanna do.” you know? That realization was, was a huge deal and then from there it just basically went to okay so, “What do I want to do?” I had no idea. I just went to sleep with that, “What do I want to do with my life? I can do anything I want” and then when I woke up it was basically surfing. So I went back to that childhood where I remember saying, “I want to do that one day!” You know it always goes back to that which is interesting. And told my mom, “I want to go surfing.” And her response helped me so much because it was like you could see like she was really excited like, “Yeah! Go surfing!” In her mind that was great that was cool. Go do that. Which helped a lot. And so I went and took a surf lesson and the first guy was like a, what I would, you know cause I didn’t know anything about surfing, but he was a stereotypic surfer dude. Surfer talk. Surfer everything it was great, you know, I learned how to surf, I mean I stood up on the board that that was the thing I stood up on the board. I might’ve stood up on the board twice and I was out there for about an hour and a half it was fun, a lot of fun. I remember standing up but I can’t remember much else out of that cause, Maia, I was so engulfed with the act of trying to do this. But I do remember driving home I was really happy. I’d literally, literally forgot what that felt like. Like, I had no, I no longer had the concept of what happiness actually feels like and it, you know, and I’m not talking about you know you got your kids, they make you happy, got your friends they make you happy, got your loved one I’m talking like happy where, that I used to have when I was a little kid. And it’s like pure happiness of just doing what you’re doing just not connected to anything or anybody, not worried about all this will make this person proud of me or it was a, it was just like pure, cool feeling and that’s what I remember. And that was my drive home from, from my first surf lesson and it lasted for about a half hour and it was bumper-to-bumper traffic and I then I kind of got back in that mode but then I was this as I was driving I do remember, “Wow, that like, I was really happy that felt really good. So of course I went back and got more surf lessons but this time I went back up to the beach and somebody basically said,” Oh you know you should have him give you a surf lesson.” And so it was this one surfer guy who was very effeminate, totally non-stereotype of what you think a surfer would be. Very talkative, very kind and um I, you know, it was perfect for me. Very um welcoming, yeah. So I took lessons with him and he gave me really good tips that you know, he showed confidence in me and helped me buy my first surfboard and that was it after that it was like, “Well, I’m not doing anything else because I’m like a half-hour happiness every day is fantastic. You know, like I’d still go back into my post trauma stuff that you go through sometimes when you go through some stuff and put yourself in positions where you’re like, “Why the hell did I put myself in that position?
Maia: Yes, I know this question.
Andrea: Yeah, but you know on a daily basis of getting a little bit a jolt of happiness, a little bit a jolt of happiness, slowly, before you know it you’re like, “I’m doing pretty good. I feel pretty good.” because that was, that connection this pure happiness was connected to surfing. That, you know that was a constant while I was trying to put my life together basically, you know? It saved my life, really. I mean that’s how I, that’s how I view it. Surfing basically saved my life because I was such in a, you know, really bad space, really bad space. Who knows? Who knows, you know? I coulda either continued my spiral of making self-destructive decisions or not, you know, and I was headed in the spiral of constant self-destructive decisions, where surfing, kinda went “ER” kind of turned that a little bit for me and, um, you know, that’s where that truth thing comes you know when now you are, you’re questioning why you’re in this position and you know my modus shifted from being a victim, “Why is this always happening to me?” “Why is this always happening to me?” to, to solutions-focused, you know like, “Okay this happened but basically taking ownership that it happened and seeing if I can make things better for myself, you know? So it was all tied to this feeling of being happy, you know? I didn’t know that back then but that, that was my anchor. It didn’t have nothing to do with how good or bad I was it was just 30 minutes. The act of surfing is (46:18) I was so engulfed in that act that, you know, I don’t time to think, “Like I am happy!” It was more like the muscles are sore but it feels good and, “Wow, that was awesome!” and, “Wow, that dolphin was so cool that popped up!” you know, like, all these random things would happen like seals and dolphins and seaweed and sunsets and all these little things that you know, I never noticed before. You know, I never noticed it, I never noticed the sunset, I never noticed the wind. I never noticed the, you know, now, you know ok this is about 6 knots, there’ll be texture on the ocean, all these things that were tied to nature, it was like um. Just, it just woke me up to something other than the consequences of living in a concrete society brings you and everybody’s affected by it some kind of way and you know, from that point on it really just became a battle, it still is for me, basically it’s always a battle about trying to get back to the ocean tryin’ to get back to the ocean, trying, constantly: God it’s getting too much I’ve got to get back. But that was good, I felt lucky to have that one instructor and he was really good, really good.
Maia: And can you tell me about your first instructor or instructors? Was that instructive for you that he didn’t fit the stereotype?
Andrea: Yeah because I didn’t either [LAUGH]
Maia: Although the grace and skill of her surfing was in a different universe than mine, Andrea’s story was built of steps I think know well from my own. As a college instructor for the last decade and a half, my time surfing had dissolved so many artificial barriers I’d constructed for myself, particularly in my identity as a teacher of art and photography. They were barriers that initially stood between the subject I thought was the reason I was there and the clear objective of an education, the ability to craft a better life for yourself, your community, and your loved ones. Barriers that put a false gap between my own art practice and teaching, and between work and play. Andrea’s take was instructive.
Maia: You were in your early 30s then [yep] and but that was not the first uh way that you had oriented your life around physical activity. You have a background as an athlete, right?
Andrea: Yeah, yeah, my you know I don’t know, my mom she just never, she really hate, hated uh stereotypes or roles that you have to follow. And so what we could do that was neutral was activities, sports. So lots of sports you know lots of outdoor play kind of stuff and so that started really young and she got us swimming right away. It was all about keeping us active and keeping us uh, trying to keep us from being too gender oriented in terms of toys and what you’re supposed to do. So that was really good you know.
Maia: Your mom was and probably still is a powerful influence.
Andrea: For me yeah she is [yeah].
Maia: You started in San Diego but found Malibu relatively quickly.
Andrea: Yeah, yeah because I, I’m getting ready to turn 32 and um was basically coming back home to kind of lick my wounds after pretty, uh horrendous long-term relationship.
Maia: Clearly you seem strong and healthy and happy and so you made it out of that rough patch.
Andrea: Yeah! For sure!
Maia: Can you talk about the ways that you think surfing influenced you?
Andrea: Yeah, that that started the healing immediately. I mean I think just being near the water just being by the beach actually automatically helps. It helps anybody. You know I’ve never really seen children fighting at the beach, ever. I have yet to see that. My opinion is the hustle and bustle of, of city life of trying to survive, um, just takes toll on you and, you know it doesn’t help making bad decisions in your life but overall it’s just the concrete lifestyle causes you to be blocked in but then you do that, you’re blocked in so much that it’s just, you don’t know that there is anything else. It’s like when people fall in love with hiking and or fall in love with some kind of activity that gets you outdoors you know, it kind just kind of breaks up the concrete. And so surfing did that for me for me it’s like a frame of mind, you know? So I just feel lucky to, to have stumbled on it, you know.
Maia: Absolutely, I share that feeling of being very lucky. So you are a teacher yourself [yep, I’m a teacher] and you teach special ed. now?
Andrea: I teach special education now, yep.
Maia: Full time in Los Angeles?
Andrea: Full-time in Los Angeles County.
Maia: Did you start teaching after or before you started surfing
Andrea: I started teaching after.
Maia: Is there a story that you could tell about being a special education teacher in which surfing or some of these lessons of truth or presence or something that you got from surfing you can identify that, “That helped me in this moment with the student or this administrator, this form, or any part of your [yeah] job and the challenges that you have.
Andrea: You know as far as teaching, it just your frame of mind changes the longer you surf and so that helps with working with kids because change is inevitable, problems are always gonna arise but that mentality of going with the flow or hanging loose actually applies and surfing, even though it’s a stereotype, it’s a cliché but um that helped.
Maia: Without directly arguing with me Andrea pointed out how much surfing requires you to retrain your instincts. A fearful person my brain chemistry and nature, surfing has been a stern task-master in in delivering some nuanced lessons about how much there is to fear from avoidant behavior.
Andrea: For me it’s all about the kids, you know? And these kids are all outside of the box thinkers and uh, put it mildly, nothing goes as planned you can totally plan out a lesson and have it broken down and really think like, Wow, this is the lesson of all lessons these kids will really get it.” and then they’ll throw a monkey wrench in you. But then you know, you just go with, it. Like that, that’s the key, you know like, I’m sure many people have said this but, every wave is completely different, every single wave, even Malibu, every wave is completely different, the difference between last night and today, for example, it’s a good example. But the one constant thing is change, like the wave is moving, there might be bumps in the way, the next wave is different, constant change, the conditions are changing, everything is just constantly changing. And to have the best session you have to be okay with the change that, that presents itself. In terms of teaching, especially teaching special education, there’s a parallel there, because we gonna be changing left the right and you gotta be able to go with it, and you gotta go with it in a with a fun attitude, you know? And so I tell, like, assistants that come in “Look, you have to be okay with change and you have to be okay with things going as planned. Nine out of your 10 ideas are probably not gonna work out but that one that does is gonna be great. You know, I could surf for an hour and maybe catch two waves but those two, gonna be good. Surfing opens up your creative spirit, and creative mind and teaching requires that you be creative for you to connect to the kids, you know. Especially kids with special needs, you, you know to unlock them you got to show them that you’re passionate about what you’re doing and, and that you can see them you know and surfing is, it’s funny you can you paddle into a wave and try to remember if you’ve ever noticed the wave, like have you really looked at it? Like, when you’re catching that wave and then you wipe out I was like did I even see that wave or was I just riding the wave, you know. That little change of reference where it’s like okay, I am going to just, as I’m surfing my goal is just to see the wave, it was just look at it as it’s moving. If you do that with students, wow, things just change you know that if you do that with surfing it’s just like, wow! I’m really looking at the wave like you know, I used to play these games with myself while I was surfing it was just like ok, I don’t remember this wave, I just rode it, I don’t remember what it looked like, I, I remember what it looked like, right when it was coming and I was about to take off, but now the wave is over, I don’t think I even looked at it, you know, LAUGH and so then it became like I’m gonna try to look at this wave and then when you look at you’re just like oh my gosh I have so much time in the world but when you don’t look at it, it’s like AAHHHH [LAUGH]. And that’s how it is with kids you know like if you take your time to really look at it and not worry about your lesson plan and just really zone in on, on the kids then, then your lesson kind of ends up coming like naturally, which helps.
Maia: So interesting I, I don’t understand quantum physics at all and it’s very dangerous to try to draw metaphors from science but you know there’s the act of observation, observation changes the thing observed and that’s absolutely [oh my gosh] true of surfing and teaching isn’t it?
Andrea: Yeah, yeah. When you get those few moments where you actually are aware that you’re truly watching that would like, yeah that wave I watched that whole wave, um man you end up realizing, hmm I have plenty of time. LAUGH There’s plenty of time. And sometimes people are like, “How did you do that?” I was like well there was plenty of time LAUGH. Yeah, but um that that’s fun but it’s so hard to do. There are so many things, there are so many things that you could do with surfing at Malibu specifically, the challenge is, when people are gonna get in front of you, which they are, the challenge is, can you not just zone in like an attack dog on this person, “You’re in my wave, you’re on my wave and it’s my wave, it’s my wave!” Are you able to say, Huh, let me cut back and see what I can do cutting back, you know like, are you able to see something else those are fun challenges for me like oh that’s kind of, I like to think about it in those terms,
Maia: This is a story that I’ve heard many times just talking to my friends, you started out because it’s fun and you get this rush and you feel good um and it turns into something much bigger than that. Somehow the ride it’s almost analogous to the text that you can consult to sort of develop these priorities and inform the rest of your life.
Andrea: Oh yeah, for sure I mean it um, you know, for me it became my, became everything. Surfing became my everything it’s you know my religion, my peace of mind, my ego checker, my you know, my happiness meter, it’s… it’s really everything for me. But that doesn’t mean that I’m like a surf rat and I’m only hanging at the beach all day, it’s just, the surfing frame of mind extends outside of the actual act of surfing.
Surfing is all about um, you know facing your fears. I remember being in that position where it’s like a huge wall of wave coming at you and you know that that white water’s coming next but, at that point you have a decision to make. Or you cannot make a decision and just be stuck there. And a lot of surfers just get stuck like. AHHH But I realized you, if you go right at it um it always ends up better. It always end… it always has ended up better for me when I face that wall and, basically I’m scared shitless but I’m still like, “Paddle straight to it. Paddle straight to it.” And I paddle straight to it and you make, you make it through, you know. And you look back at the people who froze, they’re just a hot mess back there it’s just like whew! LAUGH I gotta remember to keep doing that. [SO good] But you know although facing your fears. I’ve had some really huge waves coming my way where you would you know be frozen and just and I have been frozen a few times and, you know, like I said near-death experience occurs as a result. One of those things are you just gotta go you gotta go for it.
Maia: A novice at interviewing, I hated to interrupt Andrea, but the audio quality had gotten distracting even to my newbie ears. We spent a quarter of an hour winding up canyon roads looking for a quiet nook to continue. Now, for the first time in our talk, we no longer had a direct view of the ocean, but I could still smell it. What I didn’t know when I conducted this interview is that in the long months it would take me to understand how I could edit and offer it with integrity, the most contentious, divisive and, for me, personally frightening presidential election of my life would unfold. As I listened to Andrea’s perceptive words about all that Malibu, had to offer, I learned something altogether visceral about what these people I was seeking out and their ocean centered practice, had to teach me.
Maia: What about learning to navigate the, what to me are, just mind blowing uh concentrations of people paddling for a single wave that you find in Malibu.
Andrea: Oh yeah, it definitely gets real crowded. You know it never bothered me right from the beginning so and that’s like a frame of frame of mind. I, I try to look at it in terms of, you’re just a different city so Malibu is like New York City of of surf spots in terms of the crowd factor. New York City has its, if you grew up there it has its way for you to get around. You have choices to make in life you know like in Malibu people have choices they don’t have to get all uptight and freaked out by the crowd you know that’s not that doesn’t have to be the only option. You know there is so much to learn from, from others too from the crowd you know how to maneuver how to kick out how to strategize. I learned how to read the waves a lot better so I could I could spot out waves that maybe a lot of people can’t spot out because they’re too preoccupied by everybody else around ‘em that they stop seeing what’s what’s there. It seems like there aren’t any sense of rules there, but there you know there is something there. You have to settle down enough to be able to see it. I find myself telling people to just settle down. If you can’t settle down then maybe Malibu maybe not for you but I think if you look at in terms of there’s something here that I can learn and you can, you know it’s, for me that being able to maneuver, being able to do important cutbacks and all these things that would probably take you years if you were by yourself because at Malibu you have to do that for your safety and the safety of others so you end up um paying attention a lot more and you’re also paying attention to other people in order to have a good time you have to be aware of what’s going on and if you’re in a surf spot where you’re by yourself which is also fantastic, I’m not saying that is not because it is fantastic you know, you’re not learning that as fast. And if you come from a place that’s like that you get to Malibu and you’re just, like holy crap this is just crazy unreal. But if you could manage to get one wave it makes it all worth it at Malibu because that wave is so incredible it’s like, Shoot, that’s at great wave that’s a great wave.
Maia: It’s an incredible wave, it goes on for…
Andrea: Yeah, if you can get one
Maia: so long if you can get one.
Like every endeavor, surfing has its tropes, characters, and stereotypes. In my own head, this contemporary culture, offers, among others, the lone male, feeling at one with nature, a contemporary wanderer above a sea of mists, resentful of others the intrusion. Or the aggressively territorial local, feeling like his home is just that, home, and slashing the tires (or worse) of the tourist with enough hubris to dare to do something equivalent to just letting herself into the living room without knocking, taking up diminishing space in the increasingly crowded waves. I am not one of the usual suspects at my home break in North Carolina. There are a few middle aged women but we are not the norm. Still, it’s a laid back place with something of what I like to think of as Southern wave-hospitality. This was my first real surf expedition to California and I was afraid, particularly in the somewhat delicate emotional state of lingering grief, of encountering West Coast localism- a feeling of not being wanted- a woman of a certain age who no longer has a role in the tribe. Malibu did precisely what Andrea said it does. It made me pay more careful attention to other people. To see them for who they are, not who I expect them to be. This iconic, most crowded of all surf breaks on the U.S. mainland both taught and surprised me.
The very thing that I think you are describing happened to me today twice um I have you know we all walk around with assumptions built into us and categories in our head and I’ve definitely got the “man who knows how to surf and this is his homebreak” category
[Oh yeah] I’ve got him stereotyped and I and I’m in my head I know I know what’s gonna happen if I get in his way [yeah] but twice today [yeah] there were men who had the wave and I backed off and both times they came back and said he didn’t back off that way [oh, yeah, yeah, yeah]. And one of them, was his name yeah yeah Mico, is that him? [Yeah, yeah, Mico] he came up and he’s you know basically said “I missed you, I tell people I have abandonment issues. Don’t leave me alone on a wave again!” [Yeah, he’s a good guy] and I thought, “Oh, this is so interesting!” This place has things to teach me.
Andrea: Yeah, for sure, for sure you get the whole spectrum.
We had a conversation only an aficionado could love about Andrea’s surfboard, a contemporary design by surfboard shaper Tyler Hatzekian she had made for herself. The women she cites as the first female surfers in Malibu were among the first American women who surfed. In ancient Hawaii, surfing was practiced equally (and expertly) by both sexes.
Maia: So, uh, the board that you were riding when we were out there is called the Malibu Chip
Andrea: It’s based off the Malibu chip.
Maia: It’s based off the Malibu Chip.
Andrea: It was designed in and around the 50s. It was the first board that was made a lot narrower and interestingly enough it was originally designed for some of the board shapers of that time, women started surfing during that time and so in their minds they’re thinking let me make something a little lighter and a little board more manageable for the women that are surfing. You know like it’s like like it’s like right around the pre-Gidget, right around the pre-Gidget area, and then And then the guys realized, you know, they’d borrow their girlfriend’s surfboard and realize, “Wow, this board’s kind of fun!” And it got accepted is not just a chickboard. So to me that’s interesting. You know, I’m at the point in my surfing where it’s like, I’m becoming more interested in board design. I wasn’t in a rush to go short. I started surfing when I was 32, I could see transitioning to short board maybe by now but you have to remember I’m 15 years old in terms of surf years you know so I’m still a grom and I’m still like, there’s still a lot for me to learn. And just changing my longboard board designs makes a big difference so then so I figure you know let me go back in time where there was a really important shift in long boards and then work my way back up to you know, to when I started surfing I got, I got this this board made a phenomenal shaper whose influenced, by Lance Carson who surfed Malibu and so I figure well he might be the closest connection Lance Carson was highly influenced by Dora so that’s why I chose Tyler to make the board for me and uh today was the first day I got it on some good, good Malibu waves.
Maia: For anyone out there who does not know the Archetypal tale of Malibu, it was the epicenter of the first modern American surfing boom. In the 1950s creative surfers found new uses for WWII inspired technological innovations in lighter boards and wetsuits. The increased freedom of movement afforded by cars and spending money meant more surfers riding Malibu’s perfect point break. In 1959, when the movie Gidget came out, the hordes descended and we really haven’t stopped coming since. But something happened in the mid-60s. Boards got shorter and performance oriented surfers redefined wave perfection. For a time, Malibu wasn’t as cool as it had been. But times change, longboards are back, and people like me are forever seeking a few days of Malibu perfection.
Andrea sited two particularly well-known surfers from Malibu’s Golden Age, Lance Carson, known for his gravity defying nose-rides and Miki Dora, surfing’s most enigmatic, charismatic and famous outlaw. Andrea wasn’t just interested in the ride but wanted a craftsperson and a narrative to enchant her board with meaning and history. She chose a shaper who knew the history of the place and was interested in picking up where one thread of it, the golden age of American longboarding, had been interrupted. It was a kind of conservatism that built on nostalgia but with something still real, and profoundly relevant. This resonated deeply in November of 2016.
There’s something you said that I want to go back and make sure I heard cause this is such an exciting concept to me. It sounds like you’re trying to experience the history of your place, which is Malibu, [Maybe that is it] in a different way than you would if you just read about.
Andrea: Yeah, yeah and that’s definitely true I’m definitely trying to I’m just trying to figure it out through board design. So Tyler, he’s this phenomenal surfer and he’s been shaping since he was a kid, from his perspective the idea of longboarding kept evolving a certain point that evolution, kind of halted and actually almost died because short board took over and so there was there is a stop right here and so he in his mind is he wanted to continue that evolution so he, he was you know in his perspective of shaping longboards is from that perspective of trying to continue that evolution based on this history. I’m so interested in long boarding um, much more than short boarding for some reason, you know, I like to move around, and I like to move my feet and I like to um I don’t like to be stagnant. I like to feel like I’m walking on water. I really want to learn the style in which you had to surf in order to surf these surfboards. Which has been very, very interesting. I’m learning, I’m learning quite a bit you know, learning quite a bit.
Maia: Could we talk about the background in team sports and the transition to surfing and what happened along the way.
Andrea: Sports and athletic stuff was everything at least from my Mom’s perspective. She was gonna freaking make sure that we were gonna be independent women that could take care of ourselves sports became that, that thing but I play basketball. That was my first love of one sport well actually I had a lot of different loves but basketball became the thing in terms of when I got to be middle school and high school where it’s like, “ok I wanna do this, I wanna do this for my life.” And great about team sport is you’re in this together and you’re uh, you know, you’re part of a larger group, translates well to corporate America or to, to jobs and stuff people like to know that you’re a team player and all that. But the, one of the one of the things that um, that to me, just for me my own personal view about team sports or just competitive play is that the whole point of what you’re doing is actually to beat somebody else, you know, to beat down somebody else, to beat them and ultimately that other person who you beat, they do feel bad cause I felt bad when I would lose and um I was all in that. You know and you work as hard as you can to prepare to beat the other team. It’s always about conquering somebody else or something else to, to get that trophy or to feel like you know, you’re the one. So, that mentality requires, you know, first of all you gotta be all in and you gotta be so into this team whatever the mascot is, that you, like you’re willing to like go to all, all lengths to get that but that, you know, it’s a very aggressive way to think about um physical fitness. It’s a very aggressive approach and what surfing did for me was it gave me that um that desire to improve and to compete but I’m not competing to beat somebody else. I’m trying to improve myself. It was all always about self improving rather than you know, I’m gonna get them, and that’s what I really liked about sport. Surfing helped me transition. Cause for some athletes it takes many years to transition away. You know, you always hear about athletes that should’ve retired 10 years before their time and that’s because it’s so hard to, to make that shift when you give your life to something and surfing you know allows you to do that without having without having this beating thing that I can’t stand. I mean there are parts of surfing that are like that. There’s competitions and, and I’m not saying that I haven’t done em but I’m I struggle at those competitions where before you know I was known to for like I’m the one that’s gonna come through at the game, you know when it counts I’ll be there, where now competition, it’s kind of like, “ah” and that this doesn’t go, go with surfing for me. Surfing helped me get away from that you know and not necessarily feel like that’s the only way to be, to be physical. I’m getting my personal goals met and my sense of like, I want to continually improve and get better and um and it helps subside this, this aggression that comes from competitive sports, you know, like I used to go play all over LA, you know you’re the only female there it’s like, “I got next, yes I’m playing” you know, and you you know you have to really be aggressive to get even opportunity to play. Um, surfing you don’t have to do any of that so it helped me to, kind of put that down when I stopped playing college basketball.
Maia: This observation, from a Malibu surfer, was amazing to me. In my mind, we are discussing a break where there are as many people “competing” for waves as any other scarce resource you can imagine. And yet this woman’s practice in this most populated of all waves, was all about healing from the ill-effects of an emphasis on competition. Clearly, I had and have a lot to learn.
Andrea: You know, I can compare myself to other people but not necessarily compete because everybody out there has such a different style that you you basically appreciate other people’s style it’s not one of those things where it’s like I don’t know if you can be the best surfer in the world. Some people say the best surfer’s the one having the most fun ya know. I personally think the best surfer’s the one that’s continually open to for growth like I’m having the best time continually learning you know?
Maia: And did the shift from competitive physical activity as you say um to this different kind of physical activity, did that inform or influence any other parts of your life do you think?
Andrea: Yeah because you know you still, the thing about competitive sports is you, you have to have high expectations. That’s a good thing, you know. So I still continue to have high expectations for myself. I’m still gonna go all in but with the surfing there’s a truthful aspect so I have high expectations for myself in terms of being truthful to myself which surfing certainly brought along. Like this idea of truth. How are you truthful? There’re so many different ways you can be truthful. Like my goal is to always be try to be truthful but truth, truth is painful [often times]. So how do how can you be truthful but also kind and also thankful and you know all these terms all these things all these words that I never really thought about start to come to play with surfing and, shoot, surfing, you know, it was easy to have a ego with basketball because, you know, I can beat you. I can beat anybody, you know, but with surfing the minute that you have an ego and think, “You got this.” you know, uh Mother Nature will let you know very quickly that you’re just a little peon you’re not even a peon you’re just a little molecule may not even be a molecule. You’re smaller than a molecule. Because that’s happened many times you know, you, on a small day seem you assume everything is no big deal you take it casual and cut your foot or on a, on a big day you think oh I, I can get this wave and you’re held down underwater and you almost drown. There’s always there’s always reminders that uh you can’t have an ego. You gotta come into it very humble.
Maia: You’re not in charge.
Andrea: Not in charge whatsoever. Not in charge whatsoever.
Maia: OK, You said something really interesting and I think I know what you mean but I don’t want to make any assumptions. You talked about the connection between truthfulness and surfing. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Andrea: I haven’t had those egotistical moments in a while but I’m sure they’ll come, because I’m human but those egotistical moments when you think that you know more or that this is your space, not everybody else’s to share, those moments where you’re very ego driven um and you think that’s true that’s the truth, this is who you are the ocean puts you in your place and makes you accept the fact that no we are not as grandiose as you think you are.
Maia: So you’re talking about some kind of capital T truth in which you know, you are part of a larger whole
Andrea: Part of a larger whole…
Maia: You have to get right with that.
Andrea: Exactly and then that translates in just other things then it becomes about you know this word “truth” and then you’re always constantly trying to understand what that means you know and being truthful to yourself and then that translates. you know are my boundaries being pushed? Is this really what I want to do? Is this is making me feel good? And then you start making decisions in your life that that lead you into trying to investigate what is this thing called truth, you know. Not necessarily you telling everybody the truth and hurting somebody’s feelings. You’re telling yourself the truth about who you are and what you are. That that’s has translated from surfing you know. So, it’s like so it’s like the boundaries, What am I okay with? You know um ya know I made a conscious decision to unplug you know like no Facebook, technologies, it’s pretty much hard to reach me but that was like a like a conscious decision because I was recognizing that for me it was capitalizing too much of my time and now my time becomes, is valuable because of surfing it’s like oh hell no. I want to use all my time for creative purposes. Surfing is a big creative option so I don’t want to waste that so, so it’s just being truthful to my own boundaries and my own sense of self and also kind of learning how to put my ego in check from being, you know, from being an elite athlete.
Maia: I don’t know if this gets at it or not, but there was, I started to say this to you in the water but um we talked a little bit yesterday we were lucky enough to surf last night when it was kind of crazy and mixed up and then surf again this morning when it was a lot bigger and more typically classic Malibu [yeah] and each had its challenges for me.
Andrea: Oh, for sure
Maia: As I was reflecting on our time yesterday uh when I was trying to got to sleep but too excited to sleep last night uh I had this moment where I was thinking about you being a Division I college athlete [yeah] and I told you the story that, you know, I loved athletics until I got to junior high when you had to try out and I couldn’t make the teams. We had these two really quite diverse experiences in this one place but together and both times you would turn to me with a big smile and say this looks like a good one and uh and I am very aware of and grateful for the way that surfing can bring people who are very different from one another in terms of their experience or ability, bring us together and in this sort of mutual appreciation of one another [yeah] um and there is a way that you can appreciate one another’s truth. [yeah right] Like you can get into the authentic experience of someone else mastering something that they haven’t done even though it’s not at an elite level and they may never be at an elite level but it’s not about that.
Andrea: It really isn’t really about that you know surfing is not, well for me because you know it is for other people [sure] so I can’t really speak for but for me, it’s uh surfing is an experience and if you take a growth approach and a learning approach, we’re both learning. We may be at different places but we’re it’s really the same place. We’re both trying to to access this amazing energy you know it’s just… There isn’t really for me there isn’t a hierarchy. Of course you see great surfers like, “Oh I envy that and I want to do that.” But I know now that. You know? You can do that you know? You can do that if you put your whole energy into it and you study and you treat surfing as a discipline, as something where you’re actually truly, if you if you embrace it, you don’t have to do that way but if you choose to embrace surfing as a as a holistic discipline, you can, you can pretty much get to just about anywhere like I was telling you before it’s just little steps. Surfing allows you to keep opening more little boxes, you know? And you just keep opening keep opening keep opening and you know, eventually you have you have these days it’s almost like a nirvana, you have like these days where everything just connects and you know time stands and still and everything’s in slow motion and you just you truly are just wholly in sync with whatever energy is out there in the waves. Those are very few and far between but if you continue to have this growth mentality every blue moon you’re gonna have these days where it’s just like, “Wow I truly was dancing with the ocean. I was truly connected to something other than myself” and so that’s what I shoot for I’m always shooting for that I’m always like thinking oh man when those days come, they’re so far in between when those days are there and you can feel it it’s the best, it’s the best feeling. It’s like meditations like that requires that you truly think about it in all aspects you know? Which is cool and I like, I like that I like those surprises that come like that.
Maia: When you say you think about it in all aspects what do you mean all aspects?
Andrea: I mean you, you think about it when you’re in the water and when you’re out of the water. You know surfing gives you this, um this frame of reference I mean think about it you’re like in the ocean for that hour and a half if your mind is right because you have to be okay with people around you but for that hour and a half you are literally not thinking about anything else but this movement of water that people say traveled thousands of miles and it requires that you think about the present to get the most out of this wave too. Doing that and trying to do that outside of surfing is good practice, you know? Or you know what is required to truly be in sync with with the ocean also you know you gotta think about your body you think about your intake you gotta think about stretching and I want to be as fluid as the water’s fluid so it’s like oh wow I’m able to do some stretching now that I wasn’t able to do when I was in college cause when I was in college stretching was just like uh, I wanna hurry up and play this game and beat this team. Where now it’s like when I’m stretching I’m thinking about this will facilitate another box to be opened. Also, um the aggressive, angry side of all of us, um is definitely putting that in check is directly related to surfing for me. Over time I’ve had less “uuuh!” about other people, you know, like I dunno, just recognizing that that kind of stuff is kind of cool. Kinda cool.
Maia: Is it fair to say that you think surfing’s helped you be a better person?
Andrea: Definitely, yeah it has. I mean, it just depends on who you’re talking to. I mean if you’re talking to my partner [laugh], there’s been some adjustments there you know, because,.. I think it’s helped me to be a better person to be around for sure. If I’ve gone too long without surfing then my partner is basically like, “You need to go surfing. LAUGH I need you back right, go surfing. I’ll see you later” LAUGH and you know it just depends cause you know the other side of it is un, yeah it can appear to be a pretty selfish act, you know too. It’s not all Kum-bay-yah I meant um but like I said, it depends on what kind of surfer you are. I tend to prefer surfing on my own and learning and doing these things but a lot of people prefer, the camaraderie in surfing is fun too, you know? And I don’t really see me as surfing on my own cause I, I know so many, so many of these people out there so we just talk out there and have a good time, you know so..
Maia: Not just out there but on the way in. People are excited to see you coming!
Andrea: “Yeah, we had a good surf we got lucky today!” We always say that too is like every day we go out it’s like, well we got lucky today!
Maia: A lotta lucky days at Malibu!
Andrea: Even if it’s like a terrible it’s like, “Oh it was pretty fun!” [still lucky]. Didn’t expect much and I got something LAUGH
Maia: so good. Yeah sometimes low standards are the key to a happy life.
Andrea: Oh yeah, heck yeah, I agree.
Maia: You and I both have an a a background of some sort in visual art, although I cheat with a camera cause I can’t draw all, uh but the, you know the, the art world is just as much bound by our concrete mentality as every other world [mm hm] and so there is the, you the same factors, the domination, the competition, um the production mentality [oh yeah] Can you talk about the way that surfing has altered your life as a creator or informed your life as a creator.
Andrea: I don’t want to say I’m a painter even though I got my masters in painting because I I’ve evolved in terms of how I think of myself in terms of that and I just I’m just a creative person. I like to create, I like to make things. And um surfing has allowed me to make sure I follow my muse. You know it’s made me feel okay with the way in which I choose to create. You know, up until surfing I always had like, “I’m irresponsible I’m not enjoy, I don’t want to do this, gallery hopping, and I don’t wanna do this, I never really wanted to do any of that like I…
Maia: And that felt irresponsible?
Andrea: Well, somebody’ll say well do you have in your work up, and I’ll say, nah, I don’t. You know, but, um you know surfing there is a form of art, I don’t know what you call it where it really is about, well performance art is similar to that but they videotape themselves, so that they can document but surfing is an art form. And it could be why I love long boarding as well because for me, it was about dancing and moving and using the board to, to help me feel as if I’m walking on water but in a very kind of, more of a dance performance. Now I think I’m switching, not switching but I’m now using these, going back in time, which is allowing me to kind of figure out, um, the wave in a different way, but it’s still a form of dance to me, a creative act. But it’s a creative act that, one for the most part you won’t remember as soon as you kick out, you just will feel it. And two definitely nobody else is gonna see you know so as soon as you do it disappears. It’s one of those things where as soon as, soon as you create it, it disappears only thing you can do is feel that it was incredibly, that felt incredibly creative and it felt incredibly beautiful, you know. Like I was telling you know, I suffered from low self-esteem and um, you know, there are times I’m when surfing that I feel so, I feel like a just incredibly beautiful woman. And I’ve never you know, shut up you know I’m usually like I can’t have a complement so I’m kind of you know outside of the surf setting but for me to feel like, oh I really felt beautiful. Like I felt like a beautiful, I feel beautiful, I feel just as beautiful as the wave, you know like I I, I enjoy having that feeling and um that has been um, that’s been very interesting for me and then I enjoy beauty when I see beautiful surfers you know, it’s like, all of it is creative, all of it is artistic. I’ve been making work in the ocean, you know and so it’s hard to, you know, I’m still painting here and there and I draw and I make things, I create, I create, basically I’m creating uh and I’d like to think I’m trying to create, um, something that makes you feel good you know, where before it was always about the drama and downtrodden, you know where now it’s more like, I just want to create things that I just want to do, or I want to create things that are tied to my goals, I’d love to make some furniture, I like to, I’d like to do this act on the wave I’m just gonna paint and see what happens, you know. I’ve had quite a few instances where I paint or draw something that I dream of, a scene and then it comes to fruition, it’s just like, Holy shit! Okay then.” I’m gonna be painting my dreams all the time.
Maia: That is a superpower!
Andrea: It’s like let’s paint our dream. I’m like what is that [talk about visualization!] What’s my heaven like [LAUGH] Let me paint my heaven [Absolutely]. And then I go through periods where I I’m not actually actively painting but I’m creating, I’m painting on water and so you can’t really see it, it’s just kind of, well it’s for myself, I’m doing it for myself, it’s like I don’t really have a, you know, I don’t have a sense of urgency that, that I need the attention.
Maia: Surfing seems to give one, if I can generalize from my experience, a different yardstick for beauty too.
Andrea: Yeah, definitely.
Maia: I mean suddenly all, all of the things that you or even your heroes were capable of creating are not in the same category as what the ocean creates over and over again.
Andrea: You kidding me, yeah. It’s like um yeah, shoot, I mean you can’t, I couldn’t even, you know, there’s no comparison, there’s absolutely no comparison, no comparison.
Maia: It is to turn one’s self, I’ve never thought about this before but, but to allow yourself the to shift from sort of the, the conceit of being the creator to being a grateful member of the audience.
Andrea: Yeah
Maia: When the ocean is the creator…
Andrea: Definitely, definitely and and and those, and the day, my best days are the days where I’m in sync with it, when I feel in sync with it. Shit. Now those days last, I mean I end up dreaming about those days like when I have those days when I’m like totally in sync and for some reason all the best waves just you know, I don’t know if they’re all the best waves but they’re all the best waves for me and I’m in sync, man shoot, I’m as happy as a clam for weeks! And you know I still have my, I have my I have my memories you know I can go back in time and say, Let me just go back and dream about that [LAUGH] remember that day when I was able to do that and it just felt so, like I, I am able to rewind em, you know, in my mind and then they start adding up and it’s just like, oh, I’ll just go from this one to that one it’s kind of like, and I feel good. Makes me feel good and then, and then days like today that are really fun too on those rare occasions where everybody has a Aloha and stoke and everybody’s happy, Oh you go, no, you go, LAUGH, I got it, Ah, that was great wave!” Those don’t happen all the time either you know, but this morning was one of those days were it was like like the right kind of the right amount of Aloha Stoke was there, the right amount of people were there.
Maia: So Is there any thing else that you would want, I mean if you can imagine your, um the ideal audience member for this and I don’t have an audience yet so far it’s just me but is there anything else that you would want that person to hear that you would want to share with that person cause that’s what this project is really supposed to be, um, me trying to find a way to share all of this wisdom that I feel like I get exposed to in certain other surfers.
Andrea: Here’s the thing I recognize that um surfing for me is a state of mind. It’s just a state of mind. The ocean is a major part of this globe, it’s like 70-something, 78% and it’s increasing cause now Global warming, we’re getting more ocean which I think is probably good maybe the earth is trying to cleanse us of this human madness but surfing is a frame of mind, you don’t have to actually be in the water to be a surfer, like you could get that same surfing experience hiking. You can get that same surfing experience in other forms. It just happens to be surfing for me but you talk to other people who are in different activities that’s outdoor related, entrenched in some form of nature and you get surfing. You get the surfing thing. I’m a water person, so, I’m not saying that the ocean’s not strong, it’s hella strong. But if you are somebody that is so far removed from it that there is no access to it, there is access to this feeling of, feeling of nature and hearing and listening to birds and paying attention to things, you know, in your backyard. You know what I mean like, um, you know that’s you know surfing allowed me to look and see what’s around me, you know, like, oh, there is wilderness in the city, I never saw it because I never paid attention to it. You know what I mean, like, um so so surfing could be anything and it doesn’t have to be standing up on the board. It could be boogie boarding, it could be building sand castles, it’s not the end all to be all, it it’s the frame of mind that you get from surfing which is really about being in nature with no concrete in front of you um that that I would challenge the that notion that it can only be in surfing because I don’t believe it has to, you know if you drive up to the mountains, or if you you must go to some of these national parks you quickly recognize that, oh I feel good today and we weren’t anywhere near water now is because you are in and amongst um amazing stuff. You know, amazing stuff, it’s amazing out here. You know, it’s it’s beautiful and sometimes, LA is tricky especially this time of year you don’t see the stars but you do have opportunities, like after rains or certain to certain specific times you can find little pockets of time where you notice that the, so I would say that, I would say I’m, you know, I’m blessed and I feel lucky that I stumbled onto surfing and it’s provided me a lot of joy and now I know at first when I first started surfing I did worry is like oh my God if something happens to me I can’t surf I’m gonna die I don’t know what I’m gonna do. But I do recognize now that if I was forced to step away from the act of surfing I would still be able to find some joy in the mentality of surfing and that’s that’s the thing that, you know that aloha spirit that the Hawaiians talk about is not just in the ocean but that’s what I’m hoping for hoping that (when that day comes where I actually literally cannot physically surf that um, and then I’ll be in a quest for another thing, another surfing.
Maia: Eloquent powerful and so generous, thank you very much for all of that I do feel I have written a few waves to wisdom today.
For more interviews, to see photographs resulting from my own ocean-based practice, and to learn about our surf-centered retreats visit wavestowisdom.com