The Ocean is Ferocious Beast

I had my first day of surfing today. Harder than it looks. and I didn't love it. Though I am holding final judgement until I have as much success as failure. I cannot say that I discovered I disliked surfing but rather that I discovered I dislike being pommeled by waves. The ocean is so powerful - each time I started out towards the breaking water I kept thinking how futile it is to fight a wave. How foolish I am to do anything other than what the ocean wants. And it seems the ocean wants to kill me. Roll me around it its salt-water mouth, slap my board into my face, instil a sense of panic and disorientation, and then spit me out waterlogged and cursing onto the beach. With any luck on a collection of beached blue bottle jellies to boot. I felt like a duck out of water, or perhaps more appropriately, like a Kansan in the ocean. What an impediment it turns out to have grown up in a land locked state. The only other time I can remember swimming with serious ocean waves, I was 6, in Florida, and once one went over my head and I spent the rest of the day looking for hidden treasure in the sand.

But as I think about surfing, and inevitably about how my reaction to it reflects my deep-set flaws and shortcomings, I have decided to push on. Pony up.

As I said to Jacob's dad - I need to figure out how to not fight the waves. Learn instead to intermingle my fate with the waves' so as to share in a common destiny.

I don't know what that means really - but it sounds very Zen.

Plus I need to paddle harder.
It only sucks because I am doing it wrong.