Waves of many forms surround our daily life. Some are invisible, and others are in every item our eyes come across while we're awake. And then, the most magical of them all: liquid waves.
When was the first time you have ever seen the breaking of an ocean wave?
Were you young or already a grown-up adult? Were you alone, with family, friends, or schoolmates?
How and where did you first see a wave? In a newspaper, magazine, TV, or real life, right in front of your eyes?
Do you remember what you felt? Wonder, fear, excitement, doubt, hypnotism, fascination, attraction, obsession, or a bit of all of them plus a few more?
Waves are forever intriguing, unique, and pretty much like every single one of us.
We do share a lot with these ocean travelers.
We, the people, and the waves are born, evolve, grow, and blend together until we eventually reach our ultimate destination and dissipate for eternity.
We witness waves through their whole life cycle, and, in a way, they too.
The Peaceful Ever-Marching Army
The relentless marching and crashing of the waves - there are few natural events we can spend hours observing without feeling tedious.
Their different hues exhale and trigger human feelings.
There's the turquoise wave, always peaceful and heavenly, and there's the navy blue wave, introspect and violent.
And all the in-between shades that, like us, fill a rich and nearly endless canvas.
My fascination for the beach and the waves began when I was a toddler.
No matter how dangerous the waves were, I felt that I wanted to experience them, merge, and be part of their revolution.
Have you ever noticed that a person may become part of a wave, even if for a few seconds? Try closing your eyes, diving underwater before they're about to break, and let go.
You'll roll with it until it's gone.
Today, I cannot be on a beach and not look for waves. It's an automatic process embedded in my subconscious roots since I was a kid.
For many, the absence of waves near a sun-kissed sand strip is a dream scenario. "It's better for swimming," they say.
For me, it's a near-desolate scenario.
Waves are life. They're like a bustling city in the first week of September. They keep our hopes and fantasies possible again.
Imagine a painting featuring two empty chairs on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. And then, imagine if all the elements of the painting were kept still, except for the constant movement of swells.
The waves would travel and break and return forever, like a live broadcast on canvas, and the remaining objects and surrounding features would stay quiet, unmoved forever.
That would be the perfect artwork, blending human creation and Nature's will.
My good friend Romy Muirhead kicked off that elusive dream, portrayed in her magnificent 1999 artwork, "Chairs," a print that I bought, framed, and put on my office wall right in front of me.
Swells should be televised 24/7. I believe there would be an audience.
And there's more than just the power impressions the hues and the never-ending flow provide.
There's the shape and size, two variables carrying drama, tranquility, impatience, freedom, anger, care, confusion, grief, serenity, and the complete palette of basic and complex human emotions.
The Wave as a Living Entity
Have you ever asked a wave a question? Have you ever asked a wave for a wish to come true? Have you ever thanked waves for soothing your pensiveness?
I believe waves are living entities. Waves have changed my life.
They allowed me to be carried by their energy when I was a teenager, and they allowed me to dedicate part of my professional life to the pleasures and joy they bring to millions worldwide.
To be able to walk on water. What a blessing, isn't it?
Some of the finest tributes ever paid to the magic of surfing were actually made by people who have never ridden a wave.
I remember one in particular.
"It's perfectly logical to me that surfing is the spiritual, aesthetic style of the liberated self," Timothy Leary said back in the 1970s.
"It's the metaphor of life to me: the highly conscious life."
Waves are water in motion, near-perpetually moving energy.
They divert and diverge and get channeled if superior forces get into play. They know their limitations and have no plans to rule the planet.
They sometimes dare to enter our territory without permission, like an army furiously invading the enemy's land.
There's actually a paradox in the elements: water can beat earth, and air may extinguish fire.
Waves are indeed a metaphor for everything in our life. They come and go and come, just like the beginning is the end is the beginning.
Medicine Against Hopelessness
Humans have become so enthralled by waves that some of us have designed our own mechanically-generated ripples without the critical help of their definitive creator, the wind.
Trillions of waves have lived and perished on our blue planet, and many more shall come.
It's the everlasting journey of life and death, a mirror of our own insignificant existence.
I know how a wave feels, marching among many others with no clear destination.
Once, in my 20s, I was deep in the Sahara Desert and told the group I was with that I wanted to go for a walk on my own for a while.
And so I walked, up and down dune after dune, under a dry 100.4 °F (40 °C) plus heat. I kept strolling until I could no longer see humans.
And then, from the top of an orange sand dune, I looked around 360 degrees, and all I could see were desert dunes popping here and there, from my feet to the horizon and infinity.
Only one thought came to my mind: "We are nothing. Nature is everything."
The feeling of pure and total insignificance and irrelevancy was overwhelming and still haunts me today.
So, waves know they're ephemeral, and nevertheless, they keep going.
Waves are the mayflies of the aquatic world with their short yet underrated role on Earth. Imperfect but mystical; destructive but healing.
Whenever I can, I check on them.
On those days of hopelessness, witnessing the conciliating power of an incoming swell for some minutes will shed a small light on our darkest thoughts.
Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com
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