We adults tend to suck the fun out of things.
We believe (oh, yes, it is a belief, not a fact) in our own seriousness and suffering.
We dry up the wells of creativity with our preconceived expectations of how reality should be.
The truth?
We have literally no fucking clue why we’re here and what this whole gig is about.
We are so attached to being useful, finding purpose, and being productive that many times over we might just be missing the mark.
When’s the last time you learned to do something as an adult and not struggled, spiralled into overthinking, hypercriticism, and default extremely high performance expectations?
The older we get, the lower our tolerance seems to get at just sucking at something and still having fun despite ourselves.
What if, when we were kids, we learned things quickly because we didn’t care if we got it “right”?
When’s your last memory as a child at the playground thinking you weren’t playing “right”?
It’s total and utter nonsense and it’s entirely a learned behaviour.
I think our intolerance of imperfection, purposelessness, inutility, and downright silliness is literally killing our relationship to joy and vitality.
We do not get old because of age – we get old because we start to narrow our perspective, our way of thinking, our movements, while the young are still in relationship with curiosity, innovation, and … play.
The crazy thing is we bring our overly serious attitudes to the most bizarre and unnecessary realms – places that are supposed to help us reengage with play, we turn into work and not in a good way.
I’ve been guilty of this at times when I look at my relationship with surfing.
Now surfing – the epitome of purposeless, joyful, play.
How the hell could we screw that one up?!
And we do!!!
The hours we pour over figuring out the “how tos”, reading surf report to see if it’s “worth it”, humming and hawing over whether it’s worth our precious time and effort.
And for what?!
All this pressure and planning and worry over what is literally playing in the fucking ocean?!
No wonder we think we’re old.
Us grown ups and our toxic culture of productivity have even manage to ruin surfing.
For real!
How is that even possible?!
Here’s a story about my own experience …
The last 6 months for me have been rough so say the least.
My health has taken a bit of a turn – physical, mental, spiritual.
I moved out of one country without a real plan on where to root myself next.
You could say things are on shaky ground.
I find myself in Brazil.
It’s cold, drizzly, and the ocean is fucking freezing despite having a full wetsuit with me.
My first day out, I decide to go for a swim/body surf at the shorebreak to just feel my body.
I’ve gained at least 10kg.
My wetsuit, always so tight and uncomfortable, feels even more squeezy.
I feel squished – and not in a good way – and weak.
The current is strong and I feel myself in the midst of a pretty huge reality check.
My body, my health, my conditioning, the extra kilos, and the chronic inflammation in my whole system – it’s a lot and I feel a real fear about my confidence in knowing my capacity right now.
I may have been a strong swimmer, and moderately decent surfer, but this is where I am right now and it’s going to take some time.
I quickly realize after that swim that I have got to drop any and all expectations.
I ask myself “what would bring me joy right now?”
What would actually feel like fun?
If I drop any and all expectations of “getting back into shape”, or “being able to surf again one day” …
If I just ask myself instead “what would feel fun and accessible to my body to be able to just enjoy being in the ocean?”
Every day that I can, I walk along the beach.
It’s cold so I bring a jacket.
Often, I walk super slowly as if I have nowhere to go.
This is my purpose right now – a moving meditation, pace dictated by the pulse of the ocean, rather than my will to push onward.
I talk to the ocean and it answers back.
I pick up plastic and random trash.
I walk slower, meandering.
I listen to the rhythm, the pulse of the earth herself, guiding me.
One day it’s sunny.
I look out and there are the most dazzling waves.
Knowing I can’t actually surf them doesn’t matter.
I’m entranced by their shimmer. The sea sings to my heart.
“Come in!”
I answer … yes.
I get on the wetsuit.
I walk barefoot down to the water.
I walk down the beach a ways until I find a fun looking spot.
There is a little girl with her mom.
She’s on a boogie board, playing in the shore break surf “look at me!!!” she exclaims.
I laugh and revel in her play and joy.
It’s the perfect place to body surf in the shorebreak so I join her.
Normally I feel like I have to fight the breaking, messy shorebreak with it’s chaos and currents but today it feels more like and invitation to play and I accept.
With no surfboard to worry about, no strategy about hunting for the best waves, or where and how to position myself, I simply let myself flop into anything and everything that comes my way.
It feels joyful.
I feel exuberant.
It’s so fucking pointlessly delicious.
It brings me back to my first ever time surfing and how I didn’t even know that I didn’t know anything.
The freedom of feeling unselfconscious, of beginner’s mind, heart, and spirit.
I was a total kook and didn’t know it.
The joy of getting to swim in the ocean (the ocean!!!) overwhelmed any feelings or thoughts of the contrary.
After my playful swim, I got out, feeling a bit stronger and even more in my body than I’d felt just a few days before.
This simple act. To do this thing, just because I can, right here and right now.
I won’t take for granted the current state of my body or life circumstances.
I will swim.
Even if I can’t surf.
Even if I’m heavy, slow, and inflamed.
I feel re-inspired and a little bit more connected to life force.
A few days later, the sun shines again.
The ocean calls me back.
I answer again … yesss.
This time, there is a bit more swell.
My body feels the current and energy trying to pull me in different directions.
But I can feel myself.
I body surf the shallow shore break waves.
I have so much fun that I don’t want to get out of the water.
I also worry about over tiring myself in this delicate state of health I’m currently perched.
I let my heart and body both lead me through together.
Walking back, I take the 4 flights of stairs back up to the apartment and my legs feel tired but invigorated.
This is a good good sign.
And a caution – that this is both good and doesn’t necessarily mean anything for my future physical health condition.
That is in living with chronic conditions, you can’t predict what’s going to be good or bad. It’s the mystery of leaning into whatever moment I find myself in at the time.
And I really take that moment to take it in and really appreciate it, knowing that tomorrow might be a completely different story.
Then we come to today.
This time the weather is supposed to be cold and rainy and I’m surprised to look out and see some sun through the clouds and the most beautiful, dazzling waves.
It’s another invitation from the sea and I gratefully accept.
After the last “session”, a seed was planted.
What if I just take the surfboard?
With no expectations to even ride it.
With no expectations to paddle out.
With no expectations of how and what it might look like.
I drink my coffee.
I pull on the squeezy wetsuit.
I walk all the way to the end of the beach to the river mouth.
There are the most beautiful waves!
More beautiful than I’ve seen in all of my time here!
I know that I don’t have the strength, fitness, or health to surf them, but seeing a few other surfers catch some fun ones ignites my stoke and I decide to paddle towards a smaller area, closer to shore to start off.
My mind starts to wander down some well worn paths of expectation now.
I worry about other people looking at me.
I worry about how they’ll see me – a total, floundering kook that has no business on a shortboard, or out here.
I have to remind myself that none of it matters.
There are no goals here.
The only thing that I want to do is go for a swim with a surfboard and it doesn’t have to look like anything.
As I stretch and warm up a bit on the beach, I’m met with kindness by a couple surfers coming out of the water and it fills my stoke cup even more. I let their encouraging words remind me why I’m out here in the first place.
Joy.
Stoke.
Play.
Joy.
Stoke.
Play.
The current is strong and I quickly realize that the area I’d first chosen was a bit too much for me so I paddle back towards shore, catching whatever froth I can to help me along. It’s a bit stressful and not what I need right now.
Luckily, in the shore break, I see a few messy peaks forming and I wade over towards them.
I spend my whole session here, playing in the shore break, catching and even riding the odd wave on my belly.
I don’t care to stand.
I don’t care to perform.
I don’t give a fuck about how I look to anyone else.
I don’t feel the need to explain myself to anyone or anything.
The ocean certainly doesn’t care.
And this thought comforts me greatly.
It’s hard to get out because I’m having so much fun but I want to make sure I have the energy to walk all the way back without exhausting myself. After a few more, I walk out, having ridden the last wave only my belly, in just centimeters of shallow sandy shore break, just like a little kid catching their very first wave and refusing to let it end at the waters edge.
I walk back, totally blissed out.
6 months ago, a session like that would have had me frustrated and maybe even infuriated.
I laugh in this revelation and appreciation of how different perspective – and circumstances – can literally change everything.
I don’t have the luxury of being self critical about my surfing abilities.
I don’t sit from a place where it makes any sense of have a single expectation about this moment or any future moment.
And then I realize where I have also fell into the trap.
The trap of forgetting what the whole point of maybe even life is.
It’s not what we do here on our time on earth but how we do it.
What good does it do to make everything into production instead of experience?
Even in learning something new, this obsessive way of our society and the predominant cultural norm that is really a kind of toxicity.
We require play to learn and grow.
It’s not a mistake that nature has made and that we can somehow circumnavigate and think we’ll end up ok.
Every mammal plays.
Biologists say it’s a survival strategy.
Perhaps it is, and perhaps that’s just us looking at everything through the same lens of utility like because it’s done means that it needs to serve a more utilitarian purpose other than just being alive.
Maybe nothing really has the utility that we think it does.
Maybe it’s all just about the experience and our day to day interaction with that.
I don’t know about you, but I find great comfort in that thought.
It reminds me that jumping in the ocean reconnects me to a sense of meaning, joy, and vitality and the ocean just doesn’t care.
It reminds me that the meaning that I decide to create is perhaps more interesting than the one that has been offered – the one that’s been created for me.
We don’t know why we’re here.
And isn’t that spectacular?
xo,
jenn
Getting caught up in being too serious … how to reconnect to stoke and be a kid again … why grown ups and our toxic culture ruins surfing (and having fun and being in joy)