The Day of the Sand Piranhas

Surfing the other day at Blackies was a stunner of a morning. The marine layer thick, waves small, water glassy, a perfect day. A friend of mine brought a young friend of hers to surf for the first time; the young woman stood up on her first wave and sailed right in! We were both excited for her and envious at the same time! It took me a year of high quality failure to reach the same feat. I caught a couple waves and chatted with Surf Sensei, who is always full of interesting facts. Pelicans can hold five gallons of water in their beaks. The exact compass direction of our beach break is 224°. And he noted that the two stingrays swimming together near us were actually mating. As the sun rose in the sky, the fog began to burn off a bit. The rays of the sun began to leak through the fog and created a rainbow on the horizon. The full half-circle rainbow appeared in muted colors, sometimes brighter and more distinct and sometimes quite diffuse, the bright curve remained all morning. A fog rainbow.

Three surfers sitting on the water and waiting for waves at Newport Beach, CA; a fog rainbow to their right.

When I drove home, I noticed that my ankles and the tops of my feet were burning, as if I had gotten stung by something. Actually, a lot of little somethings: it felt like a hundred tiny pinpricks of fire. I wondered if it was a sunburn (I often forget to put sunscreen on my feet) or a new menopause symptom (new weird stuff happens all the time). But the next day, Surf Sister Haley wrote in the group chat that she got stung by "some sort of little jelly thing" and described similar symptoms. And then a couple of more women chimed in with additional reports: "I felt something hot tingly sting-y on Friday at Blackies," and "Someone else felt stinging jellyfish at Bolsa!" The "someone else" at Bolsa turned out to be our own Surf Sister Sue! Another Surf Sister, Thao, looked up "sting-y pin pricks in Newport Beach" and Google returned: sand piranhas. Tiny carnivorous crustaceans that nibble at your ankles and feet in shallow water.

Sand piranhas.

I'm not sure which phrase I find more pleasing: sand piranhas or carnivorous crustaceans.

I am somehow delighted by this news. Uncomfortable and itchy, but delighted. How is it that roughly three dozen women in close contact with each other and the ocean for roughly three years can suddenly discover a brand new critter on our shores? Wonderful. In one day, fog rainbows, sand piranhas, and a young woman shredding her very first wave.

We also had more serious news: a Great White shark sighting in Newport Beach. A woman who has been surfing this area for a couple of decades said she saw an eight foot, juvenile Great White at 35th Street. (We usually surf between 22nd and 28th.) Lifeguards confirmed the sighting, saying the shark circled the surfer three times. Protocol in cases of such aggressive shark behavior is to close the beach for a mile in each direction for a period of time and lifeguards send out a patrol boat and helicopters to look for it. They didn't find the little guy, but the OC Register reports that it's going to be a "sharky summer" due to the warmer water temperatures this year. So, this is probably not our last report.

While I am not delighted by this news, juvenile White Sharks are around us all the time; Southern California is a kind of breeding ground for them. Juveniles grow to about 8-9 feet in length and generally do not interact with surfers or swimmers. They are small and will eat smaller prey, like the stingrays and fish that are so plentiful in our waters. I do not actually worry about sharks. I am not a five foot, seven inch tall human in the water. From the shark's perspective, I am the size of my surfboard: nine feet by three feet with a couple of legs hanging down. No juvenile is going to go after me for a meal, so I'm fine.

These are the terms of the surfing agreement. Fog rainbows, gorgeous sunrises, flying on the waves, feeling a freedom I rarely feel anywhere on land, in exchange for unpredictable interactions with sand piranhas, sting rays, and sharks. There is a cost to paddling out and I am very willing to pay it. That's the deal. And I accept it fully, joyfully, and without reservation. I'm in. All in. Total vulnerability and total joy.

Why can't I be that kind of all in on land? With humans?

On land in nature, I am fine. Completely at peace. On land in community with other humans? I fight my vulnerability tooth and nail (or fin?). My mind spins tales of threat and rejection, sorrow and remorse, abandonment and loneliness, and I do my best to muscle a solution to these vulnerabilities. Years of therapy. Listening to podcasts. Reading books. Figuring out the origins of my conscious fears in my unconscious conditioning. All in the name of preventing harm from the normal course of living and relationships with other humans that is absolutely not avoidable. Total vulnerability and total defense.

There is a cost of living, a cost to belonging in community, and I'm beginning to experiment with that cost. It's a miracle, actually. All this work I've been doing has finally yielded a new me: a nearly whole person with desires and needs and a willingness to state those desires and needs. When I was young, in order to belong and feel safe, I cut off large parts of myself so I was acceptable to others. Now, I'm not so willing to do that. I am making choices for me and damn the (excruciatingly painful) consequences. I'm now reluctant to pay the cost of belonging. No longer willing to abandon myself in order to belong.

In our Anukampa course through the Sati Center with Gil Fronsdal and Vanessa Able, this month we discuss the paramita of truth. Gil wrote, "In Buddhism, truth is essential for overcoming suffering. This role of truth is represented by calling the four insights that can bring suffering to an end the 'Four Noble Truths.' These are not meant to be truths in the sense of a creed that Buddhists must believe. They are pragmatic, experiential truths — like the truth that a wound won't heal if you keep picking at it but will if you care for it. Similarly, the Four Noble Truths convey the insight that clinging to anything leads to suffering, but if we can release our attachments, suffering will cease. The Four Noble Truths have no value in the abstract. These truths are not theoretical — they are verified through direct experience and the honest exploration of our suffering and its roots." Truth as reality -- the Four Noble Realities, Gil said, might be a better translation than truths.

Vanessa discussed having an orientation toward the truth -- a stance that I will always turn inward and seek whatever truth is available to me in this moment. An honesty with the self that is never quite complete: I'm discovering new truths about myself and my history all the time, often unexpectedly in response to experiences. I am seeing the Sisterhood and its foibles differently. It isn't the easy place of unconditional belonging it once was for me. I'm experimenting with this new view of my surf sisters and how to balance my own self as an autonomous individual while maintaining connection with the group. It's not going terribly well, actually. (The feeling that I am an alien from another planet studying how to be an authentic human persists.) Though BTG is thrilled about this growth. He said, "This is great!"

Sure. Fine. Great. Ya.

Whenever I make a decision to go with my own desire -- in something as simple as where to line up while waiting for waves -- I am deciding to perhaps not remain with my friends to talk in between waves. It's lonely as an individual. Yet I see my friends making these decisions on behalf of their own growth as surfers all of the time: deciding to spend more time at a different break apart from the group, perhaps, or pursue a surf camp or a trip without anyone else in company. I celebrate these decisions for them. But for me, it feels bad -- and I'm surprised by how bad it feels.

So I am caught in the middle of these truths. No answer is satisfying. Go with the group, remain friendly and deny my own desire, or leave the group, go with my own desire and be isolated. This balance is not coming naturally, and it actually feels painful to choose myself. A mini-abandonment, perhaps, that button is grazed and it hurts. Might be thwanging that old childhood wound. How to balance intimacy and connection with autonomy and agency? I don't know. How to seek my own truth and remain within community?

I'm reminded that when I started surfing, I couldn't even balance on my board easily. It was work to sit and stay afloat on my surfboard. Now, I don't think about it. I can sit cross-legged on my board, bring up one leg and adjust my leash, even do yoga moves on it when the waves are small and we are bored and being silly. With practice, that skill became internalized. This will, too, it's just super awkward right now. All the learning and all the being exists in community, and communities remain precarious to me -- human communities, that is.

I love my fellow marine creatures. All of them. Without reservation, even though some of them nibble on my ankles and burn. My fellow land mammals? I'm not so sure. It's a different kind of pain. Between sharks and humans, I easily choose the sharks. Sharks are straightforward. People? Not so much. People are hard. Vanessa Able wrote in It Takes a Village: Finding Ourselves in Community, "Whether it’s a sangha, a family, our community at work or in the neighborhood, living communally with others can be a challenge. Community can be where we meet our edges. In meeting other people, in encountering views or ways of life that don’t always jibe with our own, we also receive a reflection of ourselves. Being with other people can open up sometimes painful truths about ourselves and the ways in which we are challenged to listen, yield, and sometimes advocate for ourselves and others."

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Hell is other people." My maladaptive conditioning largely comes from my experiences with other people; it is a different kind of predator encircling me. In Being and Nothingness he said, "By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other." Or in my case, I feel like I appear not at all in most people's minds. I am invisible. In choosing myself, becoming visible to myself, I'm actually disappearing myself from the group. In separating, I make myself invisible to others, while seeing my Self for the first time. Perhaps this growth means I'm ready to move on from a group of friends I met when I was at a different level.

My fears and defenses often envelop my mind in a fog that no sun can penetrate. A marine layer that blinds me to reality. Even within my usually (formerly?) very safe sisterhood of surfers, my mind can get in the way of the pure enjoyment this group can be. For example, the other week I had an opportunity to paddle out with some sisters I hadn't seen in a while. Because these women have created a separate chat apart from the big group, I was filled with fear and insecurity about meeting them. I wondered if I would be welcomed with them anymore. They are better surfers than I am. Would I be accepted and supported or might there be a silent kind of condescension? In the absence from them, I had invented all kinds of stories, made all kinds of assumptions -- old demons attacking from all sides; neither greed nor hate, but delusion reigned. Little sand piranhas of insecurity biting my ankles and leaving me wildly uncomfortable. A hundred tiny pinpricks of fire.

My mind was spinning as I got dressed that morning. My body was on high alert. I nearly bailed. This is what I had to do to calm myself down and get out there. One by one, I had to greet my fears. Name them. Soothe them. Burn off the thick layer of fog clouding my vision with a bright light of wholesome clarity. Turn my whole self toward a bigger truth.

• I had to realize that my assumptions and fears grow in absence. So presence is the cure for a lot of things. I needed to go, to gut it out and just go be with these people. Be brave.

• I needed to separate a feeling of discomfort from a feeling a lack of safety. Uncomfortable does not mean unsafe.

• I had to separate my feelings from the situation. The situation is neutral. My sisters are just my sisters; they are not making me feel a certain way. I am feeling a certain way AND they are present. These things are loosely connected. If you lined up ten people and asked them how they would feel about the situation, you'd get ten different reactions. My reaction is one possibility of many and comes from my conditioning. I need to get free of my habitual reactions and manage my own feelings. Most of what I'm anxious about exists only in my own mind.

• I had to separate my feelings about one person from the feelings toward the whole. I have experienced rejection from one or two of my sisters over time. This does not make the whole group rejecting. I need to not overgeneralize negative feelings or experiences with one person or small group to the whole group. (Though, honestly, that this group has separated is hard to overcome. Not being included seems to be de facto rejection. So some piece of this insecurity is based in a real event.)

  
  

It helps me to find an anchor -- one super easy and friendly person to look forward to seeing. Once I have that anchor, then I can go out and find some ease within my anxiety. I found that anchor. I made it out. I met my surf sisters and had a lovely morning. All my fears were unfounded; they disappeared, burned off as the sun rose. Waves small, water glassy, a perfect day. A reality-based truth appeared with presence. The reality check worked in a very practical, non-theoretical way. I was able to surf with these people despite my fears.

But this is why I think people are hard and I'll take the sharks. The mental machinations necessary to overcome my conditioning feels like a slog through Sartre's hell -- the opposite of gliding on the waves like our young friend. It's exhausting. But I realized something from this experience: people are not, in fact, hard. It's not people who are the problem. My own mind is the problem. I'm the difficult one. I might be making things more difficult than they need to be. Like the young woman who popped up and sailed forth on her first wave, I could make things easier on myself. Turning myself toward truth little by little by wave by wave is how the practice works. The truth is: I need to feel more comfortable in myself.

Can't wait until this stuff becomes more internalized and I can actually focus 100% of my energy on surfing. I'll be like our young friend maybe? Just sailing across these waves effortlessly, with an ease I do not have now. But I'm working on it -- like those tiny carnivorous crustaceans, one little bite at a time, I'm nibbling away at my conditioning, getting closer to the truth.