Looking Back, or The Passed, Tense
Recently I’ve noticed that we surfers spend a lot of time in the past. Our culture seems defined by it, even by a sense of loss. A constant theme: “You shoulda been here yesterday.” Implication: you missed out on something. The waves you didn’t ride yesterday are gone forever, a chapter you skipped hoping it wouldn’t be on the test.
Looking backwards sometimes puts us at odds with other pursuits. Take, for instance, the rallying cry of fans of losing baseball teams: “Just wait ’til next year.” The promise of future inherent, opening day each year overflowing with possibility. Our futures limit their scope with the next weather pattern.
Sure, other sports preserve their sense of history, but that’s where it remains — the past. It’s hard to imagine basketball fans lamenting the addition of a three-point zone. The advances make things more exciting, point people’s eyes toward the future, and make them wonder what will happen next.
This observation partially comes from my reading of Matt Warshaw’s The Encyclopedia of Surfing, a book that by its very nature focuses on the past. Riders, breaks, styles, and technologies, most of which no longer exist. The Encyclopedia is a fantastic piece of work, the amount of detail impressive. Non-surfing friends examine it, saying, “Now I’ll finally understand what you’re talking about.” I suppose that’s what encyclopedias should provide: brief glimpses into subjects, compelling the reader to find out more, or at least give illumination to the arcane.
The problem is surfing is far more than the sum of its glimpses. Sure, if you know the lineage of your favorite surfer, you’re more likely to understand his or her motivations; the same theory applies when considering the cavitation of your fins — understand how they came to be that way, and you’ll understand their operation. But if that’s where your learning ends, you’ll find yourself in an encyclopedia, under “dinosaur.”
So what should we do? Anything? Other than keeping an eye on the big picture, I can’t really say. All I know is we can’t live in the past, but an appreciation of what we have right now might make living in the future a little easier.