What Makes You Feel Whole?

This is the first in a series about surfing, Costa Rica, and what happens when you stop extracting from the places you visit and start building relationships with them.

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I’ve been around the water my whole life.

Growing up in Maine, I spent time at the ocean from as far back as I can remember. Popham Beach. Reid State Park. Hermit Island. My mom and dad brought us there, and I just loved it. The salt, the sound, the size of it. I was riding waves by the time I was four or five. Not surfing. Just a kid in the whitewater, learning what it felt like to let something bigger than him carry him somewhere.

I was around freshwater just as much. Time at my aunt’s place, White’s Beach and Campground. Moosehead Lake. Natanis Pond. Water was just always part of my life.

When I was 15, I got my first lifeguarding job at my aunt’s beach and campground. After my freshman year of college, I got a job at Reid State Park, an ocean beach. I worked there for three summers. We used to get paid to work out every morning. Running, swimming. There were days we swam a mile in the ocean in water that was probably 55 degrees. We had to be ready to go when an emergency hit. I was drawn to that.

During our lunch breaks, we’d take our rescue boards out and try to catch waves. We didn’t know what we were doing. I can’t even remember if I ever actually caught one. I just remember we thought we were surfing.

After college, running captured me. It became a huge part of my identity. In my late 20s and early 30s, I was running 70 to 80 miles a week easily. It was how I sorted things out. If I didn’t have running, I couldn’t process what I needed to process. But running takes a toll on your body. And over time, I went from 80 miles a week to the point where if I can get in 20 and not have some nagging injury come up, I’m psyched.

Around 40, I started getting really interested in surfing. My wife Becca and I were traveling to places where surfing was the culture. It started in Mexico. We were visiting tequila distilleries and ended up in Sayulita, a funky surf town on the west coast. I took a lesson. I loved it! Then surfing kind of faded for a bit until we went to Hawaii, took another lesson, then went back to Mexico for a couple weeks. There, I found a private instructor. Two hours with a professional surfer for $20. I went out with him several times.

Then we went to South Africa, and I surfed a lot there. That was the first time I ever surfed in a wetsuit. And something clicked. I came home and thought, why am I not doing this in Maine? I’d never really considered it. I was so into warm water surfing that I hadn’t even thought about getting a wetsuit. I got one and a board. I started surfing spring, summer, and fall in Maine.

I started to feel noticeably better on the days I surfed than the days I didn’t. It reminded me of running. It was filling a hole that running used to more consistently fill.

Last year, my wife Becca and I spent four weeks in Malpais, Costa Rica. I fell in love with the rhythm of the lifestyle there. I was outside from 4 a.m. until dark. Even when I was working, I was in a screened-in kitchen looking out at the jungle. I was spending 1 1/2 to 2 hours every morning in the ocean. I became a better version of myself. I thought better. I acted better. I was just a better me.

This year, we committed to seven weeks. When I got back to Costa Rica, I was rusty. Between the two Costa Rica trips, there just wasn’t much surf in the Northeast. It was not a great year. So my timing was off. It took me a while to find it again. But I did. And I was instantly back in the rhythm of Costa Rica.

Here’s the thing I’ve started to notice this year. My relationship with surfing has changed.

I’m not going to pretend I’m a great surfer. I’m still very much learning. But somewhere along the way, it stopped being about how many waves I catch. I got to this place of peacefulness out on the water. Almost like surrender. Less trying to make things happen, more letting them come. To get there, I had to accept just how much of surfing is out of your control.

Every time you go out to the ocean, it’s a different ocean.

There’s a saying that you never step into the same river twice. Same with the ocean, especially at a beach break where the floor is always changing. The moon affects the tides. The direction of the swell, the wind, where you are with the tides. There are all these things at play. So, every single day, you’re developing a new relationship with the water.

And then when you see a wave, you have to put together this physical feat in a split second. You have to remember the muscle memory of how to turn your board, paddle to catch the momentum, look in the direction you want to go, feel the energy of the wave, push yourself up, get your back foot down first, keep your feet at 45 degrees, shoulder width apart, stay relaxed, bend, breathe, read what the wave is doing. All of it, all at once.

When you see someone who can put all of that together, it looks like a ballet dancer. It looks like Prince playing guitar. It’s a thing of beauty. And when you start to understand how many things have to come together to make it look that way, it’s just amazing.

I’m not fully there. But this year, I started to notice something different in myself out in the water. I was watching other surfers and seeing mirrors of where I’ve been.

There was a guy out surfing in the first couple weeks of our trip. He knew what he was doing. Definitely not a beginner. More intermediate. But he was having a really hard time catching waves. And I could see him getting frustrated with himself. He’d miss a wave and kind of slam his head into his board out of frustration. I looked at him and thought, that was so me last year.

This year, when I was missing waves and my timing was off, I was just like, oh well. I was not beating myself up about it. Because catching waves almost became icing on the cake. Just the experience of being out there in the ocean was enough.

And then one morning, I was walking on the beach recording some of these thoughts. There was a little kid out there with a coach. He was maybe seven years old. He caught a wave and the second he got up, he threw his hands in the air in a V. Pure joy. That’s the feeling. It’s absolutely amazing!

Around that time, Becca and I were watching Surfer Dude with Matthew McConaughey. On a hike in Cabo Blanco National Park, we were sharing our thoughts on the movie. I said to me, it’s a story about purpose, passion, and integrity. The reason his character is endlessly surfing is because that’s the one thing that makes him feel whole. And that’s also his fatal flaw, because it’s the only thing that makes him feel whole. He has a friend, an older guy living in Mexico. And when someone asks the friend why he’s not freaking out about the crazy drought of no waves, the friend says, I have fishing.

I told Becca that used to be me. If I didn’t have running, I couldn’t sort out what I needed to sort out. But I’ve been able to expand on that. I have running, surfing, hiking, creative cooking. Things that make me feel whole.

Becca said, it’s flow.

I told her I don’t think flow is the right word. Flow assumes a certain level of mastery. I am far from mastery with surfing. There are times I get in the flow, but on any given session, if I’m lucky, maybe 50 percent of the time.

But surfing makes me feel whole. And not just whole as an individual. Whole in the sense of being connected to something far greater than me. It’s no different than when I’m doing creative cooking with fish that I watched someone fillet that day in a way that can only be described as an art form. Or when I’m paddling out before the sun comes up and the stars are still out and you catch a few waves before the horizon even starts to show colors of the sun. It is a feeling of awe. And it makes you feel connected to something so much bigger than yourself.

So it’s not about mastery. It’s about wholeness. It’s not about flow. It’s about practice. And if I think about it through the lens of game theory, flow feels finite. There’s an end point. Practice is infinite. You just keep tending a relationship.

And what’s happened as I’ve progressed in this relationship is that surfing has become so much more than an athletic feat. It’s a spiritual practice. A grounding practice. A continual mirror on myself. Because as I’m developing a relationship with the ocean, I’m developing a relationship with myself and with the earth at large.

I’m still very much learning. And that might be the whole point.

And I want to leave you all with some questions I’m sitting with that I believe are worth thinking about.

What makes you feel whole? Not productive. Not accomplished. Not in the flow. Whole. Deeply connected to not only yourself, but also something bigger than yourself.

And when was the last time you made space for it?

This is the first post in a series from Costa Rica. Next up: what surfing taught me about how we show up in the world.