Autumn has come to the Northeast of Switzerland. The colors are delightful, the air is clear and crisp, and the Säntis Mountain is capped with snow again. I truly love my first season of autumn here.

Just last week, I was basking in a much warmer place, on the coast of Portugal. The vastness of the ocean, the smell of salt water and feeling it on my skin, the intense motion of wind, waves, and clouds, the vivid sunsets, and the stars at night penetrated my being. I moved slower and felt deeply connected to all the natural elements. My early October was a potent period of vitalization.

I also took my first surfing lesson. My wife surfed for many years and she wanted to get back into it. Yes, I grew up in Southern California near the beach, so one could assume surfing for me would be like playing soccer for Germans. But, I loved other sports and had never attempted to ride a wave with a board. Friends in Corona del Mar high school would surf before school and sleep during most of their classes during the day. I remember well, seeing their happy exhaustion, their heads resting on their desks, even snoring in class. The teachers couldn’t do much about it!

If I would wake up early in the morning, I would study. I wanted to go to university. My friends wanted to enjoy their lives fully where they were. I felt they were courageous. I envied them, even their snoring.

After my first few hours in the waters off the Alentejo coastline, I was extremely tired and sore. I took a second lesson a few days later and was much more relaxed. I also had less soreness afterwards. I think it was because I learned a couple things, and those things apply to life in general, so I want to write about them.

In my last blog, I wrote about lingering in neutral. There certainly seemed to be no time to remain passive when trying to catch a wave that first day. I tried to do everything right.

Paddle

Push – up when you have the wave

Raise and stabilize back leg

Get up, bend your legs and don’t look down!

Well, I never made it out of the white-water, but the Atlantic offers good push in the white-water, so I did have some rides. And what I had to learn that was really important and not easy: to look up when I paddled, to look towards the beach in the direction I was going throughout the entire process. But most importantly, to wait, to feel the wave taking me before acting. Indeed, a paddling-lingering in neutral was required!

On that first day, it was far too easy to worry about my technique, about the weak right knee, about the placement of the foot, about my lack of practicing enough push-ups the last months, all of which made it impossible to get a decent ride. I kept orienting downwards towards my weaknesses and looking down. And, I fell, and fell, and fell. The board flew, and flew, and flew. I had some fun, but it was very strenuous. My tanned, longhaired surfing teacher Diogo just kept saying, “Don’t look down. It will be easier.”

The second experience two days later was much different. I tried not to worry so much about what my body was doing and focused on ‘feeling down’, feeling for the wave to take me while looking forward. I gazed and trusted that my body below would follow. And, good stuff happened rather easily, I was up and was able to catch a few rides to shore. It was almost too easy. It was as if the Atlantic Ocean took me along for a ride. It guided me. It wanted me to have some fun. My surfing attempts didn’t always work out like poetry in motion, but the experienced moments of stability were clear.

Something important lies in what I experienced in Portugal. I am indeed planning to do some push-ups regularly and surf again soon. But what is more important for me today is to reflect on how this attitude of waiting, relaxing, and trusting, of looking forward with my head up in the present and not down in deliberations of right and wrong, strong and weak, good and bad, past and future, allowed me to feel the support of a bigger force. There was a power present that could take me along and allow me to become upright rather easily. I could glide, smile, and enjoy.

In America, elections are coming. In the Middle East, there is catastrophic war happening with more conflict on the way. Here in Europe, a long drawn-out battle sucks billions of dollars out of people’s pockets and damages millions of lives. As a collective, much of humanity lives in very tense times.

Our individual lives have unavoidable challenges. The body ages, we see friends and family with illnesses. People we care about have difficult situations to work through, needy of support. It is easy to look down, to blame others, or to feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and helpless.

But, yes, we still try to stand up and help the world. We do our best. With all our physical and emotional weaknesses, our habits of distraction, our imperfect personalities, we try to keep looking forward, attention up and forward, and trust. We have the ability to get up, find our flow, and help others get up and find their flow as well. We want people in this world to feel this resilient trust, this gliding, this enjoying of life. Ultimately, we want to have the courage to get out there again and connect to this bigger power that can then carry us (and others) in the direction we are meant to go, no matter how many times we crash and splash.

I think my high school friends would be surprised to know that I went surfing. I still admire them, and hope they are able to surf the challenges of life with the confidence they had on those early mornings many years ago. I hope you can too!