Surf sessions, and the thoughts that come with them.

We just came in from a surf session in Unawatuna (it’s still hard to say that name without chuckling a bit (kind of like the town of Dickwela. Whatever, yes, I am juvenile)), and on the half-hour drive home it came to me how diverse our thoughts and conversations are while we are sitting in the lineup. It was not the best surf we had seen, probably not the worst either, but smaller closed out lines were the average for the session, so we had plenty of time to turn our personal thoughts into conversation.

We were sitting outside the break, floating on our surfboards, relaxing in the warm water and perfect weather. We were protected from the merciless grilling of the tropical sun by merciful patchy altocumulus clouds. In a word, It was perfect.

Tam said it best: “we could just float around out here all day”.

I know she had different reasons than I did for this, but I took it for the simple explanation first (this is the way my mind works: generally pretty simply). I realized that we were wearing shorts and thin rash guards, a thin layer of sunblock, and nothing else was needed. The water was warm, likely eighty-five or eighty-six degrees, and the air a slightly warmer eighty-seven or so. It was the perfect temperature. We probably could stay out there bobbing around like sea birds all day.

But in another view (and probably the one that Tam was actually intending), I realized that what she meant was that we had no particular responsibilities for the day, so, therefore…

It is amazing to me how different we are that way sometimes. I will sit there and talk about the wave-like nature of reality, the way that everything we perceive is based on waves of light and energy, and how the fractal patterns of color and light from psilocybin (or from meditation) are so similar to the wind ripples on the waves we are bobbing about in. Tam does too, but I can generally go on longer about silly ideas like consciousness and reality. Don’t get me going. It never ends.

Other times I am just satisfied to sit out there and talk about absolutely nothing.

Tam, on the other hand, can speak for hours about finance. About three minutes in to one of these conversations I am generally like, “Hey look! A squirrel!”, and desperately trying to find a way to change the subject. Today though, because of a strange lack of squirrels in the ocean, I had to sit and talk finance with Tam. Somehow it is okay. The place, the time, and the welcome interruption of an occasional wave that needs to be ridden all make it, if not enjoyable, at least tolerable.

All that in jest of course. Tam has my utmost respect for what she has done with our finances, with the houses, with taxes. We wouldn’t be here doing this now if she hadn’t been smart enough to learn all this finance stuff. There is no way I could have done what she has done in the last five years towards our goal of retirement. Like I always say: I pound in the nails, and Tam does all the smart stuff.

The greatest thing is that we now have time to have these conversations. There is no pressure to not have them, nothing more important that must be done to supersede them. So we get to talk, and we do. We used to take long road trips in the US and Mexico, twenty four hours straight in the car sometimes, trading off drivers, and captive to one another in the car. We would never run out of things to talk about. Unfortunately, because of life and whatnot those only happened once a year or so, but now we can take the time any time. All the time.

We still don’t seem to run out of things to talk about.

We talk about feeling guilty for not working (I still do). Then we talk about working, and whether or not we still want to (I do not). We talk about the surreal nature of our lives now, and take the time to honestly compare it to where we were before all this (it is better). Quite often we talk about how much healing has occurred in the year since we left our jobs in the ER, and how blind we were to how much of ourselves was being lost by doing that job (the job feeds your soul in a way, but over time it starves you: it takes much more than it gives). We talk about how much more relaxed we are, and how we actually sleep at night.

And my favorite:

We talk about nonsense, and whatever comes up. Tam talks about clouds that look like penises (there does seem to be a lot of them here), and about the fact that there are too many butts in thongs here (there does seem to be a lot of them here). I usually talk about the waves or the turtles around us (or crocodiles. That is Tam’s favorite thing to think about in the lineup).

We both talk about appreciation. Our appreciation just for the fact that we are sitting there, in the womb-like embrace of warm salt water, watching the immense colonies of giant fruit bats flying silhouetted against the pinks and reds of yet another perfect sunset.