Over the past 15 years,
surfing has become a kind of obsession for me. I surf eight months a year. I
travel to surf destinations for family vacations and seek (forgiving) waves in
the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. I have spent thousands of dollars on
boards of all sizes and shapes.
And yet — I suck at it.
*In the sport of
(Hawaiian) kings, I’m a jester.
*In surfing parlance, a
“kook.”
*I fall and flail.
*I get hit on the head by
my own board.
*I run out of breath when
held down by a four-foot wave.
*I wimp out when the waves
get overhead and I paddle back to shore.
When I do catch a wave,
I’m rarely graceful.
On those rare occasions
when I manage a decent drop, turn and trim, I usually blow it by celebrating
with a fist pump or a hoot.
Once, I actually cried
tears of joy over what any observer would have thought a so-so performance on a
so-so wave.
Yes, I was moved to tears
by mediocrity.
So why continue?
Why pursue something I’ll
never be good at?
Because it’s great to suck
at something.
When people hear that I
surf, I get a knowing nod of awesomeness from the terra firma-bound. I know
what they’re picturing: me on a thruster, carving up and down a wave face until
I casually kick out the back to paddle out to the line up for another.
The truth is that most
surfers don’t come close to what we see in highlight videos. But pretty’s not
the point. The point is the patience and perseverance it requires to get back
on the board and try again.
After a surf instructor
pushed me into my first wave, it took me five years to catch one on my own.
When I do catch a wave and
feel the glide, I’ll hold onto that feeling for hours, days or even weeks. I’m
hooked on the pursuit of those moments, however elusive they may be. But it’s
not the momentary high that has sustained me. In the process of trying to
attain a few moments of bliss, I experience something else: patience and
humility, definitely, but also freedom.
Freedom to pursue the
futile. And the freedom to suck without caring is revelatory.
My friend Andy Martin is a
Cambridge don of French literature. He has surfed the world over. But about his
status as a surfer, he tells me, “I am called a surfer only at Cambridge.” In
his mind, he sucks, but he’s O.K. with that. That being O.K. is the humility
that comes only with sucking and persevering.
The notion of sucking at
something flies in the face of the overhyped notion of perfectionism. The lie
of perfectionism goes something like this: “If I fail, it’s only because I seek
perfection.” Or “I can never finish anything because I’m a perfectionist.”
Since the perfectionist will settle for nothing less, she is left with nothing.
Self-knowledge here is
key. No one ever tells you how much you suck at something. Unless you have a
mean boss, an abusive parent or a malicious friend, most people are happy to
help us maintain the delusion that our efforts are not in vain. No, we cannot
count on people around us to let us know how much we suck. It is far more
acceptable to compliment than to criticize. So the onus is on us as individuals
to admit to ourselves how much we suck at something. And then do it anyway.
By taking off the pressure
of having to excel at or master an activity, we allow ourselves to live in the
moment. You might think this sounds simple enough, but living in the present is
also something most of us suck at.
Think about how focused
you become when you’re presented with something totally new to accomplish. Now,
what happens when that task is no longer new but still taps into intense focus
because we haven’t yet mastered it? You’re a novice, an amateur, a kook. You
suck at it. Some might think your persistence moronic. I like to think of it as
meditative and full of promise.
In the words of the Zen
teacher Shunryu Suzuki, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities;
in the expert’s mind, there are few.” When I surf, I live in the possibility.
Or, as the great father of
surfing, Duke Kahanamoku, wisely advised: “Be patient. Wave come. Wave always
come.”
But, then what’s going to
happen?
As my friend Michael Scott Moore wrote in his book, “Sweetness and
Blood,” “When a surfer takes off on a wave, there are two possible results.”
Fairly predictably for me, the outcome is an epic fail. Yet, I remain hopeful
that this time will
be better than the last.
Maybe sucking at something
where the stakes are low can lead us to a better place. Maybe it could be a
kind of a medicine for the epidemic cocksureness in our culture. Seeing
ourselves repeatedly doing something we suck at — no matter how trivial — might
make us a bit more sympathetic to how hard so many things really are: trying to
navigate health issues, listening to our neighbors, improving the economy or
mitigating relations with hostile nations.
By exposing ourselves to
the experience of trying and failing we might develop more empathy. If we
succeed in shifting from snap judgments to patience, maybe we could be a little
more helpful to one another — and a whole lot more understanding.
If we accept our failures
and persevere nonetheless, we might provide a respite from the imperative to
succeed and instead find acceptance in trying. Failing is O.K. Better still,
isn’t it a relief?
There’ll always be another
chance. And another after that, trust me. Be patient. Waves come. Waves always
come.
Do you suck
at something? Share your stories in the comments.
Written
By: Karen Rinaldi
Source: NYTimes
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