Thank you for sharing about the beauty of going to the beach. It is currently the only place my mind fully becomes freed of the mind-pollution that we all (?) allow ourselves to wade through every day. I took up shelling. My husband too. Now we drag home bags of shells and dream of finding the elusive Junonia one day. The sound of the sea erases all worries. I sometimes think about the factoid I once picked up about how our tears and the amniotic fluid have the same salt concentration as the sea. Like a Conor refuses to look up Namaste, I also won't look it up. I just know that I belong by the seaside.
Arrived back home from a day surfing at the beach on Sunday to find this sitting in my inbox. Wonderful.
It might be a meme at this point (isn't everything?), but there is a fundamentally spiritual nature to going surfing. There's something immensely refreshing to your soul about going to beach and spending an hour or two in the water. Refreshing enough to make the idea of 9-10 hours in front of a laptop tolerable anyway.
Because I prefer to believe I'm favoured by the Gods, a quick story about how fate guided me to surfing. I bought my first board from a guy randomly offf of a listing site (DoneDeal), and rocked up to his house with a hatchback that I ambitiously expected to handle a 9ft board.
We hit it off immediately, he was in his 50's but looked 20 years younger, which lends some credence to the hypothesis that fun hobbies keep you young (golf doesn't count folks), and his garage was full of surfboards, mountain bikes, windsurfing sails - he had it all. After about 30-40 minutes talking about surfing, business etc, I found out that he had been a patient of my mothers (doctor) for 30+ years, including 3, now adult kids.
Naturally, this meant the conversation extended another half an hour or so, before he told me he'd have to apologise to my mother the next time he saw her. I asked him why, and he told me "because the first time you stand up on the board and properly catch a wave you're going to end up selling everything and buying a van". After that he sent me on my way with a sizeable discount and a 9 ft board crammed into my car, with roughly 3 cm to spare.
Thankfully for my mothers sake, I'm terrible at surfing so I'm typing this from my desk, sadly vanless. But if I do disappear off the face of the known Earth, now you know why.
The piece you've written here is fantastic Tom. Too many great lines to point out, but this paragraph in particular stood out to me:
"See, the beach is about freedom from all of the nonsense and expectation and hope and worry that occurs during non-beach hours. It’s a sanctuary from all of that. The things we do while at the seaside- surfing and sandcastle build and sunbathing- are all ultimately pointless activities, which is precisely *why* they are so great and so important. The guru with the laptop finds them boring because they are ends in themselves rather than a mere means to some (usually financial) end game. They exist beyond his instrumental Type A world of having and getting.
Perhaps he will come to realise the importance of such things post midlife crisis. Perhaps not."
I can't help but worry for the people that will never realise that. Make money, ideally by building something or helping people in some meaningful way (Twitter gurus don't seem to get that this is the core of all business - yes, I am a filthy capitalist), work hard, fast, intensely and all the rest of it, but head to the beach to get in touch with your soul again when you're done.
I've used the word soul twice already in this comment, which strikes me as a step in a worryingly esoteric direction, so I'll leave it here. Always great to read these pieces on a Sunday, even if it's Wednesday before I get around to commenting. Cheers for writing them Tom.
Namaste. (Not sure what it means, and I refuse to look it up.)
Beautiful! Thank you, Tom. It made my morning today. I was sure I'm reading a beginning of a novel, then it turned into a letter from a friend.
Now I desperately need to take a train to the sea and do nothing just for the sake of it. I was there a couple of times last year and I have the best memories associated with it, just like you described.
This is the perfect companion piece to your "Beyond Boredom" newsletter from last August. Realistically, what is a day at the beach if not participating in the act of being bored? What is there to do other than soak up the rays, take a splash in the water (or dip your toes as you described), read a book, people watch? As a child I spent my summers on the New Jersey shore, hated it when I got there, & threw a temper tantrum when it was time to return to the city Labor Day weekend. Now in retirement I have easy access to the Gulf of Mexico, & I love a day at the beach & being bored! Life is good.
You’ve inspired me to start writing and journaling. There’s something special about the way your prose paints a picture, it’s refreshing to say the least, from the commonplace writing styles seen everywhere nowadays
Thank you for sharing about the beauty of going to the beach. It is currently the only place my mind fully becomes freed of the mind-pollution that we all (?) allow ourselves to wade through every day. I took up shelling. My husband too. Now we drag home bags of shells and dream of finding the elusive Junonia one day. The sound of the sea erases all worries. I sometimes think about the factoid I once picked up about how our tears and the amniotic fluid have the same salt concentration as the sea. Like a Conor refuses to look up Namaste, I also won't look it up. I just know that I belong by the seaside.
Arrived back home from a day surfing at the beach on Sunday to find this sitting in my inbox. Wonderful.
It might be a meme at this point (isn't everything?), but there is a fundamentally spiritual nature to going surfing. There's something immensely refreshing to your soul about going to beach and spending an hour or two in the water. Refreshing enough to make the idea of 9-10 hours in front of a laptop tolerable anyway.
Because I prefer to believe I'm favoured by the Gods, a quick story about how fate guided me to surfing. I bought my first board from a guy randomly offf of a listing site (DoneDeal), and rocked up to his house with a hatchback that I ambitiously expected to handle a 9ft board.
We hit it off immediately, he was in his 50's but looked 20 years younger, which lends some credence to the hypothesis that fun hobbies keep you young (golf doesn't count folks), and his garage was full of surfboards, mountain bikes, windsurfing sails - he had it all. After about 30-40 minutes talking about surfing, business etc, I found out that he had been a patient of my mothers (doctor) for 30+ years, including 3, now adult kids.
Naturally, this meant the conversation extended another half an hour or so, before he told me he'd have to apologise to my mother the next time he saw her. I asked him why, and he told me "because the first time you stand up on the board and properly catch a wave you're going to end up selling everything and buying a van". After that he sent me on my way with a sizeable discount and a 9 ft board crammed into my car, with roughly 3 cm to spare.
Thankfully for my mothers sake, I'm terrible at surfing so I'm typing this from my desk, sadly vanless. But if I do disappear off the face of the known Earth, now you know why.
The piece you've written here is fantastic Tom. Too many great lines to point out, but this paragraph in particular stood out to me:
"See, the beach is about freedom from all of the nonsense and expectation and hope and worry that occurs during non-beach hours. It’s a sanctuary from all of that. The things we do while at the seaside- surfing and sandcastle build and sunbathing- are all ultimately pointless activities, which is precisely *why* they are so great and so important. The guru with the laptop finds them boring because they are ends in themselves rather than a mere means to some (usually financial) end game. They exist beyond his instrumental Type A world of having and getting.
Perhaps he will come to realise the importance of such things post midlife crisis. Perhaps not."
I can't help but worry for the people that will never realise that. Make money, ideally by building something or helping people in some meaningful way (Twitter gurus don't seem to get that this is the core of all business - yes, I am a filthy capitalist), work hard, fast, intensely and all the rest of it, but head to the beach to get in touch with your soul again when you're done.
I've used the word soul twice already in this comment, which strikes me as a step in a worryingly esoteric direction, so I'll leave it here. Always great to read these pieces on a Sunday, even if it's Wednesday before I get around to commenting. Cheers for writing them Tom.
Namaste. (Not sure what it means, and I refuse to look it up.)
Beautiful! Thank you, Tom. It made my morning today. I was sure I'm reading a beginning of a novel, then it turned into a letter from a friend.
Now I desperately need to take a train to the sea and do nothing just for the sake of it. I was there a couple of times last year and I have the best memories associated with it, just like you described.
This is the perfect companion piece to your "Beyond Boredom" newsletter from last August. Realistically, what is a day at the beach if not participating in the act of being bored? What is there to do other than soak up the rays, take a splash in the water (or dip your toes as you described), read a book, people watch? As a child I spent my summers on the New Jersey shore, hated it when I got there, & threw a temper tantrum when it was time to return to the city Labor Day weekend. Now in retirement I have easy access to the Gulf of Mexico, & I love a day at the beach & being bored! Life is good.
Thank you for this. I‘m going to the beach today 🏝
You’ve inspired me to start writing and journaling. There’s something special about the way your prose paints a picture, it’s refreshing to say the least, from the commonplace writing styles seen everywhere nowadays
Beautifully written. It’s elegiac and wistful. Thank you for writing.