At some point most of us have heard surfing referred to as the ultimate in escapism. I remember one time in particular when this was the word chosen to summise my favourite pasttime. It was a conversation at Uni with an ambitious young guy who’d decided to join the Young Labor Party [no, I didn’t vote Liberal in the last election].
Who’s really escaping the truth? You, by mindsurfing this wave for a few precious moments, or the girl jogging with her head down who probably has absolutely no idea what is going down to her right? Photo: Sparkesphoto.com
After explaining to him that I was organising the university surf team I asked him if he ever got out in the water. “Well, you know,” he said in a pompous politically correct tone, “it’s good sometimes for a bit of escapism.” It wasn’t so much the choice of words but the way he’d been so dismissive about something that basically gave me a reason for being. I was a full-time surfer doing a part time uni degree and I’d been working three part-time jobs to scrap and save to go on my maiden Indo voyage in the uni break – an experience that would bring me into contact with a dramatically different culture, force me to confront those glaring character defects that become all too apparent when you are travelling with others and invariably deal with an eight foot Scar reef set on the head – a situation from which there was definitely no escape. Little Jimmy Labor Party told me that he was going to be somewhere safe and suburban, doing a bit of clerical work for a state Labor Party official. It was obvious that he was intent on moving up the party ranks via the easy to follow, zebra-crossing bureaucratic channels; content to become one of those modern career politicians who has never had a job or dealt with anything much more challenging than the diplomatic refusal of a prawn cocktail at a party function. In short, I wasn’t really sure who was doing the escaping.There’s no doubt that the zen-focus of that first steep drop in a session can forcibly wipe every concern you have [it better or chances are you won’t make it]. The funny thing is that some people devote their lives to meditation just to experience the kind of clarity of mind it requires to ride a decent wave. I guess what I’m really doing here is trying to formally make a case for what we all intrinsically know about surfing – that if you fully embrace the people, the places, and the challenges it lays before you it’s got a whole lot more to do with self-discovery than it does escapism.
