Surfwise: The Stanford Doctor that Loves to Surf

I was streaming the movie Surfwise onto my 52 inch flatscreen from Netflix last night. I found it very interesting. When I was young I identified with the whole surfing culture and considered myself a surfer from about age 12 to age 21(1960 to 1969). It was one of the themes of my life in that "Surfing" for me and many others was a natural religious experience with God and Nature and brought one into a natural alignment with life in a useful way for staying centered throughout one's life.

Whereas the real workaday world tends to confuse everyone because it is based upon a "Chaos" form and not something useful intrinsicly to the human needs and conditions. So when I grew up at least, Surfing was a form of centering and meditating and staying in tune with the universe. And the workaday world in general only took one towards chaos and death.

Of course all of us in one way or another have to deal with the workaday world and of making a living and supporting our families while trying to maintain mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. So, for many surfing helps do this worldwide. It is in it's own way like sitting Za-Zen and meditating only your body is getting exercise and being spiritually uplifted all at the same time.

So, that this Stanford educated doctor, born in 1917 found a way to raise his 9 children while traveling around surfing different places in a motorhome and working as a doctor to support them at various surf locations from Florida to California to Hawaii was for me very inspiring. It took a very strong person to move his children towards an idealized way to live their lives. Though he was not accepted by the general public for doing this, he was idealized by generations of surfers who understood the divine family state of being he was reaching for. Though I wasn't trying to surf I too, was trying to live this kind of life by living in the mountains on land that I bought and building my own home and home schooling my children from ages 5,6, and 8 until the oldest was 12. So for 4 or 5 years I too, attempted this idealized type of life myself. And having succeeded at this for even this long it allowed me to be a "Mountain Man" and I still define myself in many ways from this "Skiing in the winter and hiking and swimming in the mountain lakes in the summer kind of lifestyle while my children learned about nature, animals and a pure life in the wilderness of Northern California and Mt. Shasta.

The search for the idealized life is an ongoing one for people who tend to live long healthy lives. They search for it not only for themselves but for their children. And some of us have some success at this along the way.