Falling down and standing up again

It´s so easy to fall into dull comparisons between surfing and life. You try, it´s hard, you keep up, it gives you a little in return sometimes, it can be frustrating, it can be pure joy. After only 5 lessons I can say, I had any nice little parallel existing in my head and thought, it really is good material for writing about it, but only if there hadn´t been so many before me who have done it already.

Since Sunday I can officially say I know how to stand up on a surfboard. Wow. I still fall down a lot, maybe even more often than I keep standing, but my body got used to the movement, internalised it and I got the very much longed for appreciation of my surf teacher. So there is hope. And, yes, I have been dreaming of surfing a pipe. From the first lesson on. I guess it will be a long way to get there. Often enough I cannot yet estimate enough, how hard a wave´s gonna brake or what is the exact moment to press up and jump up standing. But with the ever so slight progress I made in those last two sessions I have the unbreakable plan to be good at this someday. Not like in competitions. But confident to go out there by myself, go with the waves instead of fighting against them and simply enjoy it. Because another maybe much wiser surf teacher said to me: 'You can say you surf when you start having fun doing it.' I might get there evetually, not there quite yet but I can see it, the light at the horizon. And here we are again. The greasy comparisons. All you can say about surfing, you can pretty much also say about life. Because I want to learn to go more with the flow instead of against it. And one thing the surfing really showed me already. You just have to keep trying, doing it, focussing while you do it (otherwise you swallow even more saltwater), and no matter whether you fell or made it to the beach standing up – you just go right back in. And it made me realize again that I have that capacity in me. It re-vived my fighting spirit.

I think my surf teacher smiled at me yesterday for the first time instead of pulling a face and going 'Come on, girl!'. And I really feared he could see me as one of those chubby english or german tourists, who look so uncoordinated as if they had never done any sports in their life. The boys are really pale and always look a bit dumb but are willing to try anything, go out for the big waves way to soon and always have this hectic facial expression when trying to catch a wave. They catch it, then they fall, and they don´t look good doing it. They probably never will. The girls have a different approach. They don´t even get up in the first place. They look like stranded little whales on their boards, helplessly trying to move some water around them, and even when the teacher holds their boards, gives them a starting signal and pushes them into a wave, shouting 'Up!' they hardly manage to press up thier torso without falling. Their bodies look very limp and heavy and useless. But they seem to have fun anyways.Thank God I know now he doesn´t see me as one of them. I was even allowed to go behind the surf (the so called outside) for the first time yesterday. I didn´t catch a wave but it caught me. Fair enough. As I said there´s hope.