Learning to Surf #5 - The Inspiration of Awe and the Destruction of Beliefs

I can't go surfing these days so I'm restricted to watching some videos. One of these videos even made the Irish national news. It might have changed how you think about surfing - or people in general

A story series in which I document my attempts at learning to surf. All about the psychology and philosophy of learning, practice, flow, mindfulness, enjoyment – and maybe some adrenaline rushes. Also the joys of the extra bits: travelling along the Wild Atlantic Way, going to the beach, immersing oneself in nature, spending time with friends (and hopefully some actual surfing).

Escape from information overload with some peace of mind, and stuff you can’t google.

Claremorris hasn’t drifted any closer to the sea since the lockdown began, nor has climate changed progressed significantly to raise the Atlantic to our level, and so these days I must make do with learning the names of things rather than learning the things themselves by watching videos on Youtube, or in this case, the news.

And so last week, while most of us were hiding indoors from a storm had Conor Maguire from riding a 60 foot wave at Mullaghmore on the Nine O’Clock News on RTE. It's not often surfing features on the news in Ireland, but in this instance it was in acknowledged that they were showing us a global event of sorts. This was a momentous occasion even for those in the sport – although Mullaghmore is the home of the biggest waves in Ireland, according to an interview with Maguire ones this big haven’t landed on its shores since 2015, or 2012 before that.

These things are hard to measure obviously – anyone who’s ever surfed knows that personal observations and guesses are difficult to make, when there’s more to a wave than just its height. And everyone knows that they’re the same as everyone else, adding a cheeky foot or two (with complete honesty in their minds of course) – but it’s expected that this is a record for an Irish surfer. Kelly Slater – the most decorated world champion surfer of all time and no stranger to big waves – even gave him a shout-out on Instagram. That’s like Michael Jordan or Messi complimenting a goal you scored.

But there’s a difference even for mere mortals like myself in watching a feat of human endeavour such as this, and watching even the most technically gifted goal in a game of football. The aesthetic beauty and achievement displayed in scoring even the most physically implausible and most technical of goals is lost to outsiders, to non-followers of the sport. And if at the last moment, the striker falls over and fails to find the back of the net, he probably won’t die. The skills are even lost on many fans, and watching football or rugby in person from pitchside reminds you of just how difficult the skills of these sports are – the delicacy of the touches required to control and move a ball – and how much of that is lost through the television.

Riding a 60 foot wave in a storm like that though: no-one can look at this and not have a couple of religious or swear words come to mind, depending on your philosophical approach to life. There is a visceral reaction even to the lay person. This goes beyond technical ability and transcends the possibilities of what a human being can even achieve when coming up against the laws and beings of nature. There are so many Herculean traits on display that to call it just a skill would be well wide of the mark. There is skill, athleticism, bravery, adventurousness, rebellion, and good old-fashioned foolishness some might say. And so we revert to language normally reserved only for gods and the highest states of being, or that’s excluded from the limits of polite everyday speech. Even just seeing a wave of that magnitude is alien to us (I’ve never seen one in person).

What do we get from watching these things? As someone who’s only a beginner on a surfboard, like the guy down the pub who doesn’t really get what’s going on the pitch, my viewing of this is of the naïve onlooker. I don’t really get just how hard this is, or how unique. There’s a bit of a practical manifestation of the Dunning Kruger effect going on, where the more you know about something, the more you’re aware of how little you know. In this case, the people most impressed by this will be the ones who are surfing closer to the this guy’s skill level. Or anyone who’s an experienced enough surfer to have been faced with waves where ultimately they were humbled through not being good enough to ride them, or gotten themselves into a potentially dangerous situation because of it.

But this is the sort of thing that anyone can look at in awe. We all know what waves are, and of the power of the sea. Even just knowing what the weather was like on land that day helps us relate (I didn’t even step foot outside the house).

There are risks involved for anyone attempting such a thing, and some might scold him for putting himself in such danger. The experts are more likely to hurt themselves or worse in these sports, whether it’s surfing, snowboarding, motor-car racing or even hiking or mountaineering. Despite the greater skill of the athlete at that level, the level itself greater risks involved, and these things, while being sports or practices you need to develop your own skills in, you’re always testing yourself in some way against the world – against nature itself.

At a basic human level, we can all appreciate it for the spectacle of it. There’s a visceral reaction as we watch the whites of the waves explode and crash around as this guy seems to get swallowed up as just one small element in a pure chemical reaction of nature’s laboratory; a drop  It has the same effect as watching lions wrestle and tear each other apart, or an elephant giving birth. He’s pitting himself against laws of physics, and also the ability of what other people can do in relation to the laws of nature.

But that’s what we’re all doing really. Every day. Whether surfing or anything else. Any time you push yourself a little bit past your comfort zone. Pitting yourself against reality and nature and everything else in the world. Watching a video of surfing like this is a work of art: it’s a physical representation in real-time of what happens to you psychologically when you go beyond everything you’ve ever done before. It redefines the limits of what you think someone can do, and what people can do against the unlikely odds that the natural world presents us. Like the four-minute mile being broken, or the cutting edges of technology pushing into further worlds of discovery, it just takes one person to inspire many others. To destroy the limits of their beliefs of what’s possible. And something as universally jaw-dropping as footage of Conor Maguire riding a 60 foot wave off the coast of Ireland inspires a challenging of beliefs in anyone who watches it. Whether you think too much about it or not, it happens.

It mightn’t have been the world record, but for many surfers around the world, Conor Maguire’s 60 foot wave at Mullaghmore has destroyed their beliefs about surfing in Ireland and what’s possible. But maybe better, it’s destroyed a lot of Irish people’s beliefs about what’s possible right on their own doorstep. It’s maybe even destroyed a lot of our beliefs about what’s possible to do in Ireland on a septic winter’s day. Whether we can truly grasp the technicalities or not, we can all look on in awe and appreciate something out of it. And at the end of the day, regardless of any deep insight I might try to read into it, or whatever flowery creativity I try to use to put what we’re seeing into words – it just looks class.

Sharing is Caring

If you enjoyed this, please leave share or leave a comment, or Subscribe Now for my free weekly newsletter.