Can You Be As Healthy and Happy as Surfers?

Surfing is a physical and emotional celebration.

When the waves are not good, surfers often say they are going in just to get wet. The first stroke is like that first drag off a cold beer on a hot day. There is an ecstatic feeling about being in the ocean on a board to challenge and blend with the energy churned up by Mother Nature.

There is the minimum requirement entrance fee of having health and some physical prowess. The fact that you can paddle for half an hour, duck dive some forceful energy, time a fast moving energy ball in order to get a ride that is natural and free, and then to test what you know as you read and react to your totally unique wave.

Surfing is never the same from day to day. No two waves are the same. When a wave expels its energy, it is gone forever. It travels thousands of miles and in one last breath as it mixes with the ocean bottom, it releases its energy through the water that man has learned to harness for some free fun.

What can you find in life that can give you the same mix of challenge, accomplishment, and connection? There are other things that can provide the same anticipation and then the same experience. I have always loved mountain biking. You have a contraption that only moves with human power and can tackle what nature has provided given your own capabilities.

It can’t get more simple than skateboarding. What fun could you have on a board with four wheels? How about a BMX bike? Both have pretty simple man power while riding around the city and finding natural objects to test your mettle. But then what happens when you get into designed parks and half pipes? A whole new world of challenge and ecstasy opens up.

These are easy ways to find and express passion. You don’t have to be physical to have fun. People get just as stoked taking pictures, cooking, writing, beading, sewing, filming, and even building businesses.

The idea is to live a life that as surfers say is “stoked”.  To not have something that stokes you is to miss out on the most basic connection to who we are.

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