“Watching someone in flow gives the impression that the difficult is easy; peak performance appears natural and ordinary.”
As a young boy growing up in Southern California in one of the surfing capitols of the world, San Clemente, I spent hours on the beach at T-Street during summer. Days melted one from the next; I picked the sleep from my eyes, poured a bowl of Life cereal, grabbed my board, and climbed down the cliffs to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. There, I carefully watched the tourists, the local surfers, and the waves as they gathered there and played.
The tourists always showed up at the beach with lots of stuff. Each group was dominated by stuff. They had stuff in bags, in their hands, and even in the coolers they pulled along behind them. Trudging through the soft sand just beginning to soak up the sun, the ladies pulled their children while their grunting husbands lugged the load which had so lovingly been packed just an hour before. These visitors wouldn't compromise, wouldn't listen either to each other or to the nature of the place. Everything was conflict. And, perhaps because of the transient nature of their presence in this place, everything was always a struggle, a battle. By the end of the day, these tourists walked across the sand dragging their children, their stuff, as their slippers tossed up little explosions of sand which stuck to them, frusterated them, caused little fuck words to slip off their tongues. Their parent's voices, tired by the end of the day, were jagged edges, ready to cut. The children, sad because they had to leave and sadder still because of the drive home, whimpered at the bottom of the stairs as the shadows stretched across the divots in the sand.
The benches at Cropley's and the shade under the stairs always stashed away a few surfers, like me. We were a motley crew. Some of us would hide, spending the entire lazy afternoons with our heads under towels, furtively sneaking one hit tokes of Mexi dirt weed. Every once in a while, a head would peek out, red eyes itchy, asking if anyone had another lighter or a walkman with fresh batteries or –and it always made me smile- whether the lifeguard was looking. Some of us were quiet, shy; some of us talked loudly and slapped our hands in silly ways, affecting the closeness of a brotherhood sealed in a heady combination of sand, sun, and the bursting sexuality of full-blown puberty. There, we discovered the lithe bodies of the young priestesses of the sun god. Coyly, they posed for us. They were discovering their power, as well. Their eyes drew us away from the moment and only into themselves. Others, like me, sat like gargoyles, eyes clad with sunglasses, staring out at the sparkling sea. We sat, watching the sun drip into the water; we were mystics, there, in that moment, in that time, looking into our future. Eidetically, we deftly played with an idea which we barely understood, words that have hung for an eternity preparing all for the entrance to the oracle at Delphi. Know thyself.
Looking past the sun-kissed bikini girls stretched out on the beach and the eyes of wary fathers watching us watch their daughters, the languid blue coolness of the ocean water undulated endlessly. The water would smooth itself around deep and shallow patches. Gathering power in each of these curves, a wave would well upwards, cresting, breaking into a bouncing foamy expression. I loved to linger there, in the presence of all that movement, day after day. I remember recognizing for the first time in my young life that these were peak experiences breaking up against me like the surf I duck-dived to get under and through each time I paddled out to linger there in the coolness, the only place where earth truly becomes the sky.
I knew the waves and the waves knew me. The wind knew me. The seaweed knew me. Each of the grains of sand deposited on that beach was a part of me. These were the seconds of my life manifest and strewn sloppily about. The nature of the place loved me in a way that it didn't love the tourists. It whispered secrets. It shared with me, as with anyone who listened, that there is no structure. There is no meaning, just a never-ending intertwining playfulness which simply seeks to express the nuances of interaction with those exhibiting the quietness to stop, listen, smell, touch, taste, and see, to reveal in our humanity. When we do this, we know without understanding and live, even if for a just a second, in the flow Goleman speaks of in his seminal work, Emotional Intelligence.
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