Surfing was the vanguard of my soul. It stood in opposition to medicine’s capitulations. It was my last stand… and it wasn’t enough.
I thank the divine for surfing, and it’s genesis in me. When the idea sparked, I knew no surfers. If I’d ever seen the activity in person, it was through amusing tourist eyes, so far-fetched to be inconsiderable. Yet, the seed planted and found purchase across eight years. Without surfing, I can say with honesty that I would not be where I am or who I am, today. What a plot twist for a kid from the suburbs of Oklahoma City.
The season was spring, year was my twenty-sixth, and location was the outside patio of OKC’s Whole Foods. The store was hopping then—pre-Amazon takeover—offering a rare place to study outdoors. There, entrenched by textbooks and years of studying afoot, an inner forecast took shape: I want to surf.
First year of medical school was mostly in the rearview and summer break was two months out—known as “the last summer of your life”—and most of my classmates chose to pursue research or clinic experience in preparation for residency applications. I was deep in that period of life where the unknown is more attractive than known and adventure is sustenance. Research and clinic was not for me. To make it through what remained, including board exams, clerkships, and a full-on residency, I needed not research opportunities; I needed verve.
So, I took the epiphany to Maui where I learned to surf across the island’s southern and western shores. It was a wonderful two-month season, a sneak peek of surfing, exploring, and writing that spelled contentment. I’d found a simplicity in living so desperately sought and held it in my heart. I wanted it and built it, but the season closed, and the medical school campaign wore on, without me owning yet the ability to hit pause and consider, Is this actually what I want instead of medical school?
As I studied for Step 1, Step 2, did sub-internships, and chiseled out my residency application, my bet was on surfing’s deliverance of wholeness. I filtered residencies by their proximity to surfing. In a spreadsheet breakdown of each program, ‘Surf?’ was as a comparative column. I hoped I could have it all: a surfing adventure, approval offered inside of physicianhood, and happiness.
At UC Irvine, on interview day during January of my fourth year of medical school, the program director asked our group of applicants what we’d been up to since arriving into Orange County. I’d surfed Huntington Beach the day before and fessed up. He laughed out loud and asked how a guy from Oklahoma learned to surf. I shared the Maui story, a sidebar no one else got during their introduction. While not confirmed, I believe surfing played a hand in getting me into residency, at UC Irvine, the best residency surf location in the country outside Honolulu.
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As residency progressed, a classmate and I would surf most weekends, where I got to know the gentle rights Doheny’s Boneyard and San Onofre’s epic consistency. No longer a tourist, I became a surfer, as I graduated from excitement at standing up to learning how to take steps toward the nose. I acquired wetsuits for each of the Pacific’s moods, owning a 2/2 springsuit, 3/2 all season, and a 4/3 winter suit. The dream had fully manifested.
At the start of residency’s second year, I was at Seal Beach rinsing off my board after a heavy session, when the pipe dream burst. At the destination I’d designed, doing the thing I loved, doing it better than I’d ever expected, almost daily, I wasn’t happy. I could surf every day, and it wouldn’t help. As a mirage of my own making melted in my hands, depression settled in; I had a problem surfing couldn’t fix.
There I was surfing, holding the approval of being a physician, without happiness. I could not own it all.
What I thought I needed, all this time, built through years of dedicated days, was not in fact what I needed. Perhaps I wasn’t going to figure this out on my own. I needed help and knew it, there at Seal Beach. I began reaching out to therapists.
Inside of medicine’s rigidity and personal compromise, I must have sought, first year of medical school, a counterbalance. Surfing represented autonomy in motion, freedom in openness, creativity in action. It’s what I really wanted that medicine never offered, because of course, I didn’t want to be doctor. It was life support, not life.
Surfing’s representations carried me as far as they could, until what they stood for (my soul), couldn’t animate it. I made surfing magical by who I was inside it, surfing never made me me. It was never meant to be the destination. I found that out by surfing the best breaks residency could offer, while losing myself.
In the months since finishing residency and leaving my position as a psychiatrist, I’ve been reestablishing my relationship with surfing. Less codependency and less strings attached. When I surf now, I just surf and don’t need it to solve anything. It’s been really nice. Last Friday evening I went out at C Street in Ventura, caught what was available and drove home watching the sun descend perfectly between Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands. Just surfing and sunsets, no longer surfing in the medicine shadow.
My journey has been a discovery that who I am is enough, and that I can really be no more; a gift I now offer my friend, surfing.
