1) Learning to Surf or Stand Up Paddle Board will further connect you to our planet, because you’ll understand it better. You will be healthier. You will be more flexible, figuratively and literally. Surfing makes you a happier person. Surfing will humble you. Surfing prepares you for change.
2) You will have a greater sense of understanding community. Few communities self-regulate as successfully as surfing does. Over the years, surfing has developed a set of unwritten rules that enable all comers to catch waves safely and equitably.
3) If a surfer offers respect and makes a sincere effort to abide by etiquette, they will receive respect in return.
You will become more patient. You cannot will perfect waves to appear. You cannot learn to surf in a week - or really even a year. Both take time and are beyond your control. A willingness to accept the things you cannot change will flow into other elements of life.
4) In your local line up you will share waves with surfers from the streets of Manenberg to the hills of Bishops Court. In Gaza there are places where Israelis and Palestinians surf together. They share waves. They laugh. They set aside their differences as surfing becomes an equalizer.
5) Surfing shows you how courageous you can be. Weather you are riding your first wave or paddling into surf well overhead, you need the courage not only to take the first step but keep on going!
6) "It is impossible for a surfer not to notice and appreciate the beauty of the world around us. Life gets busy, and we tend to overlook a golden sunrise while stuck in the morning traffic. Or miss the captivating dance of birds along the hedge through the office window. In the ocean, you are literally immersed in the beauty of being part of nature.
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7) You have to be present in every moment and it takes practice. Unlike other activities such as a run on a treadmill one invariably drifts off thinking of all the things needed to be done surfing keeps you in the present, focused and engaged which is a skill invaluable to all elements of day to day life.
8) Recently I heard the words shared by Mahatma Ghandi and it resonated in such a way that made me realize how surfing improves humanity. "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." Let's never lose faith, surf a little more and let's practice to be our best selves daily.
9)Go with the flow of the ocean, its rythem and learn to be patient. You are not in control, your wave will arrive when it arrives. You re in control of how you ride it but not when it decides to arrive. There is an app to check the swell but no app to control when the good waves will arrive!