“Querencia: Spanish, from the verb queer, meaning a metaphysical concept in Spanish that describes a place where one feels safe, at home, a place where one’s strength of character is drawn - the place where one feels their most authentic self.”
“It is only when we still the mind that we are able to turn it inward where joy and wisdom lie. In this inner space we find how to live in peace and harmony. Surfing teaches us about this inner space and these inner moments because they occur regularly during the surfing experience.”
- Gerry Lopez
Alongside my fantasy to run away upstate (or to Sag Harbor) and start a farm/commune/retreat center… or leave it all behind to pursue a life of the arts (specifically of making doc films and becoming a photographer)... lay my fantasy to move my life to the closest body of water with any semblance of waves and learn to surf.
I’ve always been drawn to the ocean. It is, by far, one of the places on this Earth where I feel most at home. And as a child, after fishing trips with my dad – who found fishing a respite in the midst of working at FedEx and running a barbershop – after working at the Shedd Aquarium as a high schooler, after spending a week in the Bahamas living out my dreams as a marine biologist, after spending five weeks in Hawaii learning about oceanography and sailing for ten days around the Hawaiian islands, after a shark biology seminar in college dissecting sharks, skates and rays, and after a summer at Stanford studying marine microbes in Monterey Bay… there was no doubt I was being called to live a life deeply enmeshed with the sea.
But. That is not exactly how my life has panned out. A dream deferred, so to speak.
As my studies in marine science and environmental science deepened, so did my knowledge of the climate crisis.
And as I learned more, it felt much more complicated to selfishly pursue studies and a career based on my love for the ocean. I felt a duty and calling, both rooted in learning more about the struggles of my ancestors, Black radicals, activists, and revolutionaries, who fought for the liberation of all people. I also felt a duty as a citizen of America (whose country was mostly to blame for climate change), as a young person alive in what feels like one of the most pivotal periods in history… when the stakes and urgency of the climate crisis are as high as they’ll ever be… and the window of opportunity on action shrinks.
So I tabled my love, my dream, to waffle around in the ocean and follow my curiosity about sharks especially, and shifted course.
I developed a new love, organizing to stop climate change and bring about a world where people and the planet, not profit and corporations, thrive.
And while I love organizing, unfortunately, the part of my soul yearning to reconnect with itself through water/land, could not be quieted/quelled. And no matter where I am, I always find myself getting caught back in the rip current of my own inner desires. I am always magnetically pulled back to the water.
So surfing.
I went surfing for the first time in October of 2017. I’d gotten the Brower Youth Award and in addition to hiking in Point Reyes, they’d taken us out in Bolinas for surf lessons. In spite of the frigid cold water, which required us to wear a wetsuit, I was hooked.
The second time I surfed was most recently, on my trip to Barbados. It’s been a dream to learn to surf there, and I’ve finally decided to save my money and book the trip. Each day, I’d get picked up by my instructor Ken, a local Bajan semi-professional surfer (also a Capricorn), we’d head from Bathsheba (on the eastern side of the island) to the southern part of the island, and we’d spend three to four hours out on the water.
And I loved it. I loved the process of trying to carry the board, much larger than myself, from the van to the edge of the beach. I loved skirting into the water and putting in work to paddle out. I loved how present I was for, one small moment of inattentiveness could leave me injured. I loved the feeling of waiting for a wave… and then getting a gentle push from my instructor as I used every muscle in my body to stand up on the board and maintain my balance. I especially loved the feeling at the end, after I’d rode a wave to its end, where, relishing in my accomplishment, I could jump off the board and into the ocean and just float there for a few seconds. I felt so tiny, so small, and so held by the sea.
Eventually, I’d climb back onto my board, paddle out, and do it all over again.
I knew at that moment that I was beginning to fall in love with surfing. When we finished, I was antsy for the day to pass so I could start back over again the next day. My brain was buzzing with ideas and dreams, of surfing back home in New York every weekend this summer, and of finding ways to get to other shores across the world. Now, at home, far away from the beautiful waves in Barbados, I’ve been using YouTube videos and books (I just finished Surf Is Where You Find It by Gerry Lopez) to satiate my thirst for surfing until I can get back on a board again.
After returning to New York, following a trip that reactivated my love and desire for the sea, I’m reminded that while I love organizing, I love Sunrise, I love movement building, and in some ways, my work is a means to an end.
I joke that once we’ve dismantled capitalism and solved climate change (this is an optimistic take on the future), at 80 years old I'll return to my dream of studying sharks and working near the ocean.
My life’s purpose is not to stop climate change. I did not come out of the womb wanting to end the fossil fuel era, just as most 7-year-olds don’t say they wanna become organizers to abolish police or ICE or prisons. We, as children, presume a level of goodness of people, in society, until we will come up against the harsh realities of the world. I faced those hard truths in college and chose to organize so that someday we might live in a world where everyone is free(er) to pursue their innermost desires.
So. Surfing and the ocean and home.
Someday, I’ll return to the sea. I’ll get to spend all of my time, not the nuggets of free time I currently get, exploring and wandering the ocean. Maybe I’ll live on a boat and sail across the world. Maybe I’ll join a research lab in the Bahamas and study sharks. Maybe I’ll run a kelp farm business and merge my desire to stop climate with my love for the ocean. I have no clue.
But until then, I’ll seek out sweet escapes… through trips to the ocean nearby in NYC, through travels, through books, movies and films, etc.
I also find I’ll continue meditating on the question of, What of my selfish joys and desires are justifiable in a world that feels like it is falling apart?