Every year, Elaine tells me to go surfing, and I happily comply. It’s a sport that I’ve been in love with for a long time, and I’ve been going every year since I turned 50. By now you’d think that I was good at it, but anything you do once a year is going to be difficult to master, especially if you attempt it later in life. On top of that, though I love surfing, I don’t have a particular knack for it.
On this trip, I pulled into my chosen beach town of Puntas, Puerto Rico, rented a board, hit the back break, and expected to do OK. Instead, I got worked and, as always, thought seriously about quitting. How can I be this bad after surfing for 6 years in a row now?
On the third day, I hired an instructor, “Candy,” to help me figure some things out. I met him in the parking lot of his surf school where he grabbed a huge foam top surfboard and loaded it into his car. I protested. Foam tops are for first-time surfers, not seasoned sucky surfers like myself. He insisted that we take the beginner board because the waves weren’t big enough to move my large corpus through the water.
We paddled out at Domes beach on the northwestern edge of Rincon, and I caught about 10 good waves that day. I didn’t think that you could turn a foamie, but you can. I’ve been going to Domes every day since, now surfing on a more respectable hard top, getting worked a little, but the rides have been much better.
One of the things that’s fun about solo surf trips is that you always meet other solo surfers, most of whom are on the same level you are. It takes a few days to connect, but I often make a few buddies who’ll commiserate on how ridiculously hard this sport is. My new friend, MJ, reminded me a few times that the barriers to entry are legion, and that there’s no point in beating myself up.
I used to struggle in a similar way with golf, expecting my score to be much better than it always is. For a while, when I was younger and had more energy, I’d get really angry when the cosmos conspired against my golf ball. I’d blame everything but my bad swing, play the victim and refuse to admit that my lack of experience was the biggest problem.
A quick story from a stranger who had just witnessed one of my tantrums set me straight.
He said that he had a friend with a similar problem who was onced paired with a professional golfer on a municipal course. His friend made a terrible shot off the tee, slammed his clubhead on the turf and cursed with much passion.
The pro looked at him and calmly said, “You’re not good enough to get that angry.”
I haven’t lost my temper on the golf course since.
On this surfing trip I finally admitted that I have a limited set of skills and experience, and shouldn’t expect more than they can deliver. But its difficult to live in that space. When I do something, I wrap my identity around it, defining myself – down to the core of who I am – by how things go. Instead of admitting that experience dictates expertise more than anything else, I choose to blame these failures on something related to who/what I am.
Other failures matter. They hurt, because the part of us that fails is a core part of the self. Importantly, when a failure breaks a person, the aspect of identity that’s affected may be seen as equal to the whole person. Everything else fades into the background. For instance, you may think you’ve failed as a parent, and that this somehow cancels out your professional achievements or vice versa.
I’ve done this too many times.
Just before COVID hit, I bought a rusted out, blown up Jeep, tore it down to the frame, and completely rebuilt it. I had never done anything like that, but still expected it to go smoothly. When it didn’t, frequently, I’d get upset. There are a million things you have to know about how cars work if you’re going to build one; valve spring tension, driveline angle, gear depth and lashing, wiring, welding, bolt stretch, what to replace, what to leave alone, measurements down to thousandths of an inch, and so many others were things I had no experience with. There’s no way to tackle all of that and not screw something up from time to time.
My next door neighbor once asked, “was that you screaming in the garage this morning?”
Everyone I know is trying new things, or trying to get better at something – not just useless hobbies. Parenting and career are two places where we constantly find ourselves in need of improvement, constantly challenged to get better at something, and to realize that our lack of experience, not who we are as people, will determine how things go.
Sure, there are other things like character, work ethic, and humillity that make things go a little easier. But if we have little-to-no experience, we’re going to have some difficulties. Failures will abound, and that’s OK.
Much as I’m guilty of this, defining ourselves by the way we master or fail to master our pursuits is a painful way to go through life, and one of the many ways that we distract ourselves from a deeper understanding of who we truly are.
