It has been a long winter. Not a frozen-solid-under-3-feet-of-snow long winter like I grew up with in the Midwest, but a long winter by California standards. Lots of rain. And while rain is good for SoCal in general, it's not good for surfing. I only went surfing once in January and once in February. The storms spaced themselves out, so every weekend seemed to be awash in runoff. Living in such a populated area with questionable drainage systems for storm water and sewage, everything runs off into the ocean. After a good rain, surfers (should) wait 72 hours before entering the water again, because the levels of bacteria "exceed state health standards and may cause illness" according to the OC Beach Info website. I'm definitely one to wait it out. No surfing in poop soup for this girl. So, it has been a long winter of waiting to surf.
It is unimaginable to me that anyone ever thought draining our human debris into the ocean was a good idea. We also learned this winter that DDT was dumped off the coast of LA and still sits there off the coast at Palos Verdes, AND that it was normal to dump munitions off the coast after WWII. And just today we are learning of a potential oil spill off of Huntington Beach. WHAT THE HELL, people?! Apart from the general feeling I get lately that I'm witness to the apocalypse, I am tired of waiting. I want to get out there, man!
Waiting. That's maybe why this winter has been so long. Instead of staying in the moment and enjoying whatever comes along, like I've been able to do in the water, I've been waiting. Waiting to hear about a new job. (I have had two interviews, but no joy.) Waiting for new jobs to be posted. Waiting to move. I decided to go job hunting and instead I'm job waiting. It is pushing my buttons.
But pushed buttons lead to self discovery if I'm able to wait it out, so I have relaxed enough to take advantage of the waiting. I read Glennon Doyle's Untamed this month. She wrote a number of beautiful sentences in that book that have helped me see why land life is so different from surf life when it comes to waiting. Waiting for the next wave is so much more enjoyable than waiting for a job or waiting to feel successful or worthy or happy.... To wait peacefully implies a sense safety I do not yet have on land. It's funny -- on the water, I am absolutely not safe. Sharks, big waves, aggro teenage males on surfboards...lots of things can outright kill me. But the ocean is so overwhelming, I do not even consider that I can control it. So I can relax; it's freeing. Through surfing, I have found what Doyle calls "an alternative narrative" for how to behave. Surfing for me has been all about rewriting scripts, finding new metaphors to guide my life.
On land, I cling to the illusion that I am in control -- or that I need to control to have anything happen. Glennon writes, "We only control what we don't trust." Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, posted on Instagram about fear and anxiety, "Often, it’s not the future itself that overwhelms us, but our desire to predict and shape it to our will. Anxiety often emerges not from the act of looking forward but from our relentless pursuit to dictate future outcomes." [It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.] So, I have not been waiting, I've been trying force things to come forward on my time scale and in the manner that I would like. My terms. My teeth are worn down from gritting them.
Buddhist Therapist Guy (BTG) assures me that it doesn't have to be like this. I think school has given me a misguided notion that I can effect changes in my life, that my efforts mean much more than they do, when much of life is just taking advantage of what floats by. Being as ready as possible when that next good wave comes. Being a hyper achiever my whole life is actually a handicap for this process of becoming. I do not know how to just let things unfold. I am under the illusion that I make things happen.
But even "being ready" implies an effort that I think I don't have to make. BTG says to relax and stay open. When I feel like I'm pressing -- gritting my teeth, preparing and predicting, getting frustrated that nothing is floating into view -- it's a clenching feeling. Tight. Closed off to possibility. So, the practice is to feel where I am tensed up and breathe into it to try to relax it. It's amazing how deep the clenching goes. Why? What is happening inside that has been just below my awareness? Just out of reach.
Waiting has revealed it. Doyle writes, “The moment after we don’t know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves. Right after itchy boredom is self-discovery. But we have to hang in there long enough without bailing.” Like it or not, I hung in there, begrudgingly, and heard a voice deeper than anything I've ever heard before.
The voice inside my head told me awful things. That the world is not trustworthy. That no one has ever shown up for me before, so why would they show up now? That it is up to me to protect myself, to make things happen. That the world will never meet my needs. That I am not worthy. That I'm sorry I need help; I don't want to be a bother. That grace will always elude me -- pass me right on by without noticing me. That I have never been safe and I'm not safe now. The fruits of emotional neglect spoke clearly through my waiting, and I heard them. Very little of it is actually true and that makes no difference. I have been clenched in the grip of these thoughts for 50 years.
I have to allow the grace to come in. So many things I tell myself that block the grace:
I calculate my karma: do I deserve what I want? Have I done enough to earn my dream?
I apologize for needing grace. I hear my inner voice saying, "I'm so sorry that I couldn't do it on my own. I'm so sorry to bother you. I'm so sorry I need help."
I distrust it. I don't believe grace will actually show up. Why would it show up for me? I'm nobody. When the world has taught you your worth by making you invisible, how is it one can suddenly trust the world to show up?
You can't. (Or I can't.) It isn't sudden. It takes practice. So I will continue to breathe and wonder. Meditate. Get quiet. Relax deep into my belly and imagine a different story. Doyle writes, “Swelling, pressing, insisting: There is a life meant for you that is truer than the one you’re living. But in order to have it, you will have to forge it yourself. You will have to create on the outside what you are imagining on the inside. Only you can bring it forth."
Doyle writes about developing her sense of Knowing. “I now take orders only from my own Knowing. Whether I’m presented with a work, personal, or family decision—a monumental or tiny decision—whenever uncertainty rises, I sink. I sink beneath the swirling surf of words, fear, expectations, conditioning, and advice—and feel for the Knowing. I sink a hundred times a day. I have to, because the Knowing never reveals a five-year plan. It feels to me like a loving, playful guide, like the reason it will only reveal the next right thing is that it wants me to come back again and again, because it wants to do life together. After many years, I’m developing a relationship with this Knowing: We are learning to trust each other.”
What would it be like to live inside trust? Is it possible that someone will see me and meet my needs the way I want them to be met? Can I create an alternative narrative to neglect? One that comes from my highest self that serves me and supports me? Of all places, surfing is bringing that new story. That waves always come. Even on the flattest days, the waves always come. So do little fish and seaweed and dolphins. Pelicans and beautiful friends. Jobs will come. Joy and happiness will come. And I don't need to wait or control things to force their arrival.
“This is the most revolutionary thing a woman can do: the next precise thing, one thing at a time, without asking permission or offering explanation. This way of life is thrilling,” Doyle writes. I am not yet thrilled. Maybe it will be thrilling someday, but I still want the five year plan. I’m still waiting. A big part of me still wants to know and be done -- be done worrying. This means that I’m still working on the trust — the trust that the world will show up for me despite all experiences to the contrary.
In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert relates a Zen story about an oak tree. She wrote, “They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is anther force operating here as well-the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.”
My inner oak is my Knowing. It's the grace I seek. It's me. She's already there gently coaxing me forward, and the key to reaching her is allowing her to come to me. Relaxing. Sinking into the flow of the universe and breathing deeply, being aware. Near the end of Untamed, Doyle talked about living with her partner and trying a different way of being. She wrote, "We lived, for a while, as if life was less precarious than it is, as if people were better than they are, ...and as if 'things generally work themselves out.'"
I don’t know yet that all that can happen right now. I didn't know that living life that way was an option. Realizing that the waves always come is helping me get there. Being with my surf sisters, playing in the ocean, waiting for the inevitable next wave, is healing that neglected inner voice from a previous life, one wave at a time. Hang loose, sisters. Hang loose.
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