Inspiration comes in many different forms. Whether it’s uplifting chalk art on the Strand wall, witnessing random acts of kindness, sitting with naught but yourself in a peaceful place, or watching some of your favorite surfers glide across waves; when you look at the magic around you there’s always something to find stoke in.
With wind howling and a car still in the shop, Kris Hall pulled up in his suburban at 6 a.m. and we loaded up boards and sipped hot fresh-from-the-French-press Nicaraguan coffee and headed North to the perfect waves of first point Malibu. When we arrived, there was only one other soul in the water, which was quite the sight to see, Malibu not just famous for it’s perfect peeling right hand point break, but almost more so for the packed lineups and often unplanned “sharing” of waves. While getting blown out to sea by the offshore wind and bobbing around in dirty rain and saltwater, Hall and I were unexpectedly joined by South Bay’s Marcus Fender (Kris is one of my favorite surfers, and Marcus is one of his, so by default and simply because he rocks, Marcus is one of my favorite surfers as well), who I sat with a bit farther out at second point for a while, and he, being an experienced surfer and veteran of Malibu, gave me some tips and showed me how to line myself up with landmarks on the beach and where the best overall place to sit was.
The wind, blowing so hard that it was lifting me and my heavy-volaned surfboard back up over the breaking waves, proved to be a bit frustrating, and I was getting hard on myself after a falling on a few difficult waves. My heart is set on trying to do professional contests next year (I haven’t told anyone this yet but here goes) so I was my own worst critic in the water and was telling myself that if I had this goal, I should be making every drop, never falling, and riding every wave to completion.
I talked with Marcus a little in between sets about my frustration, and he said the words that I repeat back to myself and try to live by often — “Don’t worry about all the incidentals. Just flow.” And so I flew. I sat back and watched Marcus and Kris smoothly sail down a few rides all the way to the beach, nearly a quarter of a mile, and their surfing and Marcus’s words gave me the inspiration I needed to get my head back to where it needed to be — not worrying how I needed to be performing six months from now.
And so that wave came, that wave that I thought I was way too far behind on, that wave that I dropped so fast and far down, and that wave that was pitching over my head and racing with a quickness to catch up to my flowing, planted feet. I surfed that wave all the way through, heavy and bowling the whole time, and I stuck my feet hard against wax and fiberglass and flew down the line, completely giving my whole self to that beautiful, natural state of flow.
