The Sea Inside
Choosing between surfing and friends is like choosing between drinking and eating.
Going without either will kill you. One just quicker than the other.
The thing about friendship, the way I see it, is that it is a relationship based on a mutual desire for the other to have a good life. This is a holistic care; supporting when they are fragile, laughing with, crying with, and sharing the pieces of yourself that make you whole.
The thing about surfing, the way I see it, is that it is a relationship with the sea that allows you to access the electricity within you. Allows you to replenish energy of your inner self, heal the dark wounds of social inhibition, liberate you from the boundaries of humanity and open your eyes to the rich flavour of freedom.
Allowing you to love.
To care.
To see life through a lens washed clean by saltwater.
With this, comes the irrepressible need for adventure.
To wander, unbridled, into the unknown, quaking under the pulse of anticipation in you veins. To forget the mediocracy of early nights, lazy afternoons, small talk and hits on instagram.
It’s why surfers party the hardest.
Love the most fiercely.
For each day, hours are spent in which they can feel the burn of liberty within. Something that only the ocean can give.
Choosing to surf, to chase waves, instead of staying within the boundaries of regularity is what gives us the zest of personhood.
So in a friendship, to wish a good life upon another whom you care for, is to see that it is never a choice of waves or companionship. To love someone with the sea inside is to know that without the sea they are merely a shell of themselves, twisted in anguish, aching for their salty song.
It is therefore paramount to know, that the moment we are forced to choose, is the moment we are lost to ourselves, lost to the faces around us, lost to the call of the sea…