There’s a particular stillness that happens in the ocean between sets.
A small moment when the water flattens, the horizon steadies and everyone out there seems to be waiting for something unseen to rise.
Watching my son sit on his board in that suspended calm, I wondered whether surfing is really about the wave — or the waiting.
Surfing, in its original Hawaiian form — heʻe nalu, “wave sliding” — was never just sport.
It was ceremony.
The ocean was considered mana, spiritual power, and to ride a wave was to participate in its energy, not to conquer it.
Modern surfers, whether they know it or not, inherit that same quiet reverence each time they paddle out.
Here in SA, I hear words like stoke, barrel and set, but they’re really just linguistic shorthand for something ancient: the desire to feel part of a force that dwarfs you.
Surfers talk about the “green room,” that hollow tunnel when the wave folds over you — but philosophically, isn’t that what we’re all looking for?
A brief moment of alignment between chaos and calm?
I’ve never surfed.
My balance is better suited to land, my courage to shallow water.
But I’ve seen what the sea does to those who do.
When they emerge, salt-skinned and quiet, they seem altered — lighter, almost translucent.
I asked my son once what it feels like, and he said, “It doesn’t feel like you’re walking on the ground anymore.”
I think he meant: the ocean gives you back a different version of yourself.
It’s tempting to see surfing as escapism — a way to outrun gravity or responsibility.
But maybe it’s the opposite.
Maybe it’s the most present form of being there is.
You can’t check your phone mid-set or worry about your inbox when the next swell is rising.
You breathe, you balance, you fall, you try again.
It’s both humbling and restorative, a salt-water philosophy disguised as sport.
So perhaps we should all find our own version of a surf break — that still point between sets where the noise quiets, and the next wave, whatever it is, gathers its strength.
You don’t have to ride it perfectly. You just recognise when it’s coming.
Because that’s the thing about surfing, and about life: you’re never really in control of the ocean.
You just learn how to move with it.