Good advice is only as good as our ability to remember it and apply it. There’s plenty of good advice out there about how to live our lives and how to handle the bumps in the road but most of it doesn’t do me much good. It just doesn’t stick with me. It’s not in the front of my mind when I need it most. I need to have a comparison. I need a picture to imagine. I imagine us all as surfers. Surfers don’t control the waves and we don’t control what we encounter throughout the day.
Surfing is a romantic notion. Riding on water. Feeling the power of nature and gliding along with it. I’ve never surfed but based on my paddle boarding experience, I’d probably be horrible. But the idea of it sticks with me.
We can be surfers. We can take what we get and find a way to ride it. Find a way to use the energy coming at us. Surfers aren’t just out there trying to ride the wave to shore, they’re trying to have fun with it and do tricks. How different would our days be if instead of looking at every bump in the road and every annoying person as a hassle to deal with, we looked at them as a wave to ride?
It’s a good comparison. Surfers can’t control the weather or the waves and we can’t control what’s coming at us or who we’ll deal with during the day. Sometimes the waves are sloppy. Sometimes they’re big. Sometimes there’s a lot of other surfers in the water that need to be avoided. Sometimes everything falls into place just the way we wanted (and we still might miss the wave). And lots of times, we may find ourselves surrounded by bumbling people barely keeping their noses above water getting thrashed against the rocks by the waves.
No one is going to catch a wave, perform a trick, turn that energy into something fun and ride it with grace unless they are focused in the moment. Aware of the energy coming at them and open to it. We can be like that in our daily lives. We can take what’s coming at us, handle it with grace and ride it to shore. We can have fun and perform tricks throughout the day instead of getting bashed against the rocks.
It comes down to the mindset with which we enter each encounter, whether or not we accept that we can not control what’s coming at us and whether or not we are trying to transform that energy into something good and have some fun. We get to choose. Are we out there just trying to keep our heads above water, trying to survive or are we trying to take the energy coming at us and do something good with it?