Dare To Be Bad
The joys of sticking with it
I was in the water surfing with 2 girlfriends a couple weeks ago, both of whom started around the same time as me, about 6 years ago. The waves were perfect, 3ish feet and glassy, and we were chatting in the moments between waves, cheering each other on as we cruised down the line on our colorful longboards. I felt like the surfer girl I’d always dreamed of being. We were remarking on how much we loved surfing, how long it took us to get here, and how every step had been worth it.
Surfing has an extremely steep learning curve. For many people (myself included), it takes years until you sort of remotely look or feel like you know what you’re doing. I was 27 when I started surfing, and those early years were punctuated by countless sessions where I didn’t catch a single wave. Or got slammed into the ocean floor. Or got my leash wrapped around my arm as the board flew away from me, effectively choking my arm and turning the entire thing black. Or accidentally got in someone’s way and ruined their wave and got yelled at. The list goes on. At moments, I felt embarrassed to be a grown woman flailing in the water like a drowning rat.
But even from that first session on a dreary, chilly April day, on the worst board ever, in freezing, choppy, too-big waves, I felt a glimmer that this was something worth sticking with. And I’m so glad I did.
When we’re little, we’re used to the learning curve. We go through it together. You have training wheels on your bike, you play t-ball, you learn your times tables, to read chapter books, at similar times as your peers. But as we get older, the gap widens. We get scared to start something new—a career pivot, going to grad school, learning to bake, pottery, a new language, for fear it’s too late. We compare ourselves to the people who have been doing that thing for years. But life is long. If you start a thing at 35, by the time you’re 40, you’ll have 5 years under your belt! Or if you start something at 60, by 70, you’ll have a decade of experience. How epic!! My surfing buds and I talk about our 40’s and our 50’s with glee, because we’ll be such good surfers by then. Every time I see a gray-haired lady in the water, I see my future self. I see me and my partner, who is an amazing surfer, getting to do this together forever. Sucking at something now is an investment in the life you want to live later. It is literally never too late.
In our hyper-capitalist society that tells us something is only worth it if it provides immediate material returns, and our AI-addled world that aims to remove every ounce of friction and inconvenience from our lives, it feels radical to hold onto the act of striving, trying and failing, picking yourself up and giving it another go. It even feels radical to work at something simply because you enjoy it, not with the end goal of becoming advanced or “good” at it. It’s part of what makes us human. I’ll leave you with a Theodore Roosevelt quote that reminds me that trying and failing is always better than sitting on the sidelines.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Go forth and try, my friends!!!!