The Practice of Returning

Surfing.

I have been doing it for decades. For a long time, I simply thought of myself as a surfer who surfed more often than most.

Then it was suddenly taken away from me for a period of time. Losing access to something I had assumed would simply remain available changed my understanding of why I returned to it.

Around the same period, Four Thousand Weeks entered my life, as did the experience of losing my mother.

Four thousand weeks. Approximately one human life.

Once you begin doing the arithmetic, the numbers become surprisingly small. Something you do once a month may have only a few hundred repetitions remaining. A place you visit once a year may have only a few dozen.

People we assume we will see again eventually become people we saw for the last time without knowing it.

Finitude changed the question for me.

Not: How can I fit more into my life?

But:

What deserves one of the remaining times?

Surfing does.

And occasionally a wave comes.

For a brief moment there is almost nothing else.

Attention narrows. The surface of the water matters. Speed matters. A tiny movement of the wave matters. Perception and reaction collapse almost into the same act.

Then life returns. And somehow that brief period carries energy into everything that comes after it.

At the other end of many of my days is another ritual: the sauna.

The ocean clears. The sauna integrates. It is where I rewind the tapes.

What happened today?

What deserves attention?
What deserves restraint?
Where do I need more empathy?
What should I release?
What needs to connect to something else?
What can be compressed into something worthy of carrying forward?

Morning: receive.
Day: engage.
Evening: integrate.
Return tomorrow.

I once described that as balance. I am no longer sure balance is the right word.

It may be rhythm.

Intensity and recovery. Attention and release. Tension and resolution.

Like tides. Like jazz. Like breath. Like waves.