This is a story of reflection.
If you’ve been around here for more than 5 minutes you probably know that I come and go from the studio.
When I’m here I’m all in — serving clients, mentoring staff, teaching our certificate program, organising events. And when I’m not here, I’m chasing waves.
I’ve been a surfer for 30 years. It’s my thing — the one single thing that completely fills my soul, the thing I choose to do above anything else and the thing that is the glue to our family.
As I sit on the ledge of turning 50 this year, I’ve made time for reflection and I ask myself this one question: who am I becoming?
Right now, I am sitting here on the final morning of staying at a villa, overlooking the most perfect wave, choosing to write rather than surf — a choice I never thought I would make in a million years.
But here I am, choosing relaxation.
My body is changing, and every decade or so I am choosing to meet my new self where I am rather than fight for the self that was.
Where I grew up, we learnt to surf on what’s called a short board. The shorter the board, the better the surfer. There was no room for just giving it a go — you either committed or never started. The water was freezing even on a 40 degree day, there was always fear of sharks and stories of encounters, the waves were powerful enough to snap your board (or break your eye socket, so I found out), and the locals didn’t greet you in the line up until you earned it.
Where I grew up surfing, there was no such thing as a longboard — until you were retired or over 50, and I just assumed those old guys were taking up space in a place they didn’t belong anyway.
Well, here I am on the doorstep of 50.
And here I am retiring to the ever-dreaded longboard.
Not by choice at first. Over the last decade I’ve suffered and struggled to keep up using the equipment that served me so well in my 20’s and 30’s.
My body has changed, and with that I find myself losing the strength, power and attitude it takes to keep up with the 20-something surfers I sit amongst in the water.
I no longer ‘pop’ up onto my feet without thinking. I can’t paddle out to the line up and turn around in a second to catch the first wave that comes my way. I don’t have the hustle to fight for the surf etiquette that so often goes ignored, and I don’t have the courage to go deeper than the person who keeps pushing in front of me (yes, there’s a line up protocol).
Some days my shoulders ache so much after a surf it keeps me awake at night, and my neck gets so stiff I can’t turn my head. Most days I stand up like I’m in slow motion, and my wrist cracks under the weight of my own body. If I turn a certain way it hurts my knee, and honestly, I’m happy if I catch a few inside waves that get missed by a memory of my former self.
A couple of years ago I retired to a longboard. It’s been a digression I fought for way too long, with many heartbreaking holidays of shitty surfing sessions leading up to it — but one I’ve finally succumbed to, simply so I can stay in the water and not end up an observer, which is my ultimate nightmare.
The thing is, my body has changed more than I like to talk about, and more than I want to admit to myself.
The person I vowed never to become, I am becoming. And all of a sudden I am anxious that I haven’t done enough — despite doing all the things, living the grandest adventures, surfing every wave on the planet I could get to and creating a lifestyle to get my fix. All of a sudden, as I sit on the edge of 50, my greatest fear is that I haven’t done enough and now it’s too late.
Too late to go back and surf that extra hour. Too late to stay another month when I had the chance. Too late to buy that surfboard I couldn’t quite afford back then. Too late to venture into places I didn’t quite get to.
I feel like opportunity has slipped through my fingers, and here I am succumbing to the thing I said I never would, wondering what comes next.
What will I be like at 60, or 70, and beyond? If I can’t surf, how will I survive, and how will I steer clear of being the has-been?
I’m sharing this with you because this is the story we see every day in the studio — the story of feeling like you were somebody, doing some thing, and now you aren’t. The story of having to find yourself again. The story of letting go and becoming. The story of emerging.
And even though I feel like I’ve had to mourn my younger self over the last decade as I became who I am today, I want to let you know that you can become someone else and you can be just as happy.
Today I’m in Indonesia — having surfed 3 days flat out, my body is sore. And my body is good.
Yes, I’m on a longboard, and that’s okay. I’ve found new adventures, waves I would never have sought out when I was younger, accommodations I could never afford, and people I would never have met.
This trip we are exploring a new sport of ours — foiling. And it’s hilarious that we’ve met people older than ourselves loving the foiling for exactly the same reasons I share with you. They were no longer able to get up quick enough on their surfboard, their body ached, they’d slowed down, and then they discovered foiling. Today it seems to be what the retired people go to, and so this is where I’m headed — emerging into my 50’s as a foiler. A has-been surfer. Ready to let go of who I was and become who I will be.
This is what Pilates has taught me — to acknowledge where you are right now and decide who you will become.
My journey with Pilates is long — more than 20 years. I was told back then to give up surfing, but instead I practiced Pilates religiously and became a better surfer than I could ever imagine. And as the pendulum swung and I could no longer be that person, I became someone else — with Pilates as my ever-constant companion, the one thing that gave me the freedom to choose. That’s what Pilates is: a choice. A choice to do better, a choice to commit, a choice to keep going even if it means you have to do differently — you can still do.
Too often people quit Pilates because they don’t think they have a choice, but the reality is, if you quit, of course your choices will diminish. But it is yours to choose. Age doesn’t stop us — it changes us — and we can choose to fight the changes and lose, or to learn from the changes and keep living.
What choice are you making today?
If you are ready to choose life, choose Encore, where we do life best for over 40’s.
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— Katie