If coping is making the best of a bad situation, one might still find sport in overcoming, by adopting a certain manner of coping for its own sake. You’d rather not have to defend yourself, but you’re going to when attacked, and in that case why not see if you can rebuff the pip-squeak attacker after your wallet with one hand behind your back, whereupon you finally, finally get to unleash your practiced jujitsu kick, while staging a protest in that selfsame act, Sticking It to the Man! (I’m sure the poor kid won’t know what hit him.)*10 To “couch surf” is to sleep on the various couches of friends or family members, usually as a result of being homeless or underemployed. “I’m couch surfing” in response to the question “So where do you live?” is often offered as a playful joke, perhaps so as to suggest a free and fun spell of life, valued for its own sake. If the person’s larger predicament is still regrettable, this manner of coping would contrast with surfing proper, which is done for intrinsic reasons in the most welcome of circumstances, as when one’s time is free. Perhaps someone could surf in order to cope with what is felt to be an otherwise meaningless existence—“life is absurd, so why not go surfing?” Still, the sporting activity itself would be done for its own sake. (Later we return to what such a person might be overlooking.)

  Games and Sports

  When work is done and the time is free, people often voluntarily choose to play a game or sport. Both kinds of play are an adaptive activity done not of necessity but for its own sake.

  In the philosopher Bernard Suits’s excellent definition, to “play a game” is to voluntarily attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. His full formulation highlights why the player would do such a thing. To play a game is

  to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity.*11

  So, for instance, to play soccer/fútbol is to attempt to achieve the specific state of affairs of scoring goals, in accord with a rule against using one’s hands (unless one designated player is defending the goal), where such rules are accepted just because this creates the possibility of playing a beautiful game. The rules prohibit a more efficient means of achieving the assumed goal, for instance, grabbing and running with the ball as in rugby or American football.

  When a game player seeks to put a ball into a hole, he or she needn’t assume this specific state of affairs has any value in itself. Does anyone find getting a very small dimpled ball into a very small hole, at the center of a well-mowed grassy area, an intrinsically good thing? And if one did for some reason wish for small balls to go into small holes, or to put small balls into small holes for oneself (perhaps for the intrinsic appeal of the ball drop or swirl or plunk), surely there’s no less efficient way of accomplishing this end than by clubbing, whacking, and scooting said ball toward the hole with a long metal stick, weighted by an oblong end, at first from a great distance, over and over on varied terrain. If you cared at all about efficiency, like in business, you’d just walk over and place the damn ball in the hole by hand. But in fact even (or especially) business types use the golf club. No one is so resolute about efficiency as to refuse to play on principle. There are extrinsic reasons for golf play, of networking, reputation, or getting fresh air. Yet playing golf also means seeing intrinsic value in trying to adapt to its challenges, which, as Suits emphasizes, are arbitrary and indeed patently inefficient, because they block the easiest means to a stipulated end. What’s valued in game play is the very activity of adapting, for the sake of its intrinsic benefits rather than extrinsic ends.

  Sports generally don’t limit the possibilities of action as rules of a game do. Any sport has “constitutive rules” that define what it would be to perform the basic sporting activity at all, as opposed to doing something else, such as swimming, or boating, or hang gliding. You just aren’t surfing if you’re not in one way or another carried along by a wave’s propulsive forces. But beyond rules that define our very concept of the activity, sports seem more open, except when they are being played as a game.

  Surfing doesn’t require the acceptance of rules that pose unnecessary obstacles to hydro-locomotion which are then to be overcome. It therefore isn’t a game. Indeed, in what competitive surfers call “free surfing,” surfers will say that freedom is the liberty to surf however the hell they want, on whatever sort of surfboard, with whatever sort of approach. Long boarding, short boarding, even body surfing—what matters, as surfers put it, is that you “just get out there.”*12 Once the basics of staying afloat and being carried along by the natural force of a wave are behind you, you really are free to go for your preferred means of adaptation, in style or board technology or wave approach. Surfing custom is constantly evolving, but it’s mainly a source of advice or inspiration. Even the usual contest criteria—speed, power, flow, and of course style—are very general virtues, and under constant refashioning in the fashion show of photographs and video clips that stream through surf media daily. In your own surfing, you’re still free to get out there and offer your own take, doing your own thing, whatever the hell you want. Surfing is freedom. So do what you want. Express yourself.

  Even surfing can be played as a game, by adopting rules that define obstacles and set new ends. Two surfers in the water could start scoring their rides by the usual judging criteria, making their session into an impromptu surf contest, the game now being to surf in order to score and win. If the hallmark of a competitive sport is the acceptance of rules that define scoring and winning a contest of skill, the purist will refuse such acceptance on principle. Surfing is to be done only for the intrinsic reasons that make it wonderful. Which is perhaps understandable given the risks of surfing’s steady corruption. Surfing is increasingly being made into a competitive game for extrinsic rewards of making a living, winning, and such prizes as rank, travel, fame, and gold medals (surfing is now slated for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics). Competition is supposed to bring out the best in the competitors, which it certainly does. But it can also draw forth less savory motives, much as Rousseau explained. Competition is, after all, a way of comparing ourselves with others, and thus a source of strife, vice, and unhappiness, and indeed much if not all of civilization’s discontents. (We return to this in the next chapter.)

  Yet the most strident of purists probably underestimate the gains in performance due to competitive surfing, not to mention the spectatorial excitement in watching a good contest. And the risks perhaps aren’t so terribly grave. Pro surfers themselves seem at no risk of not riding waves at least in part for intrinsic reasons. It is a cliché in contest interviews that, yeah, you know, win or lose, you’re just stoked to be surfing the world’s best waves with only a few people out there. The pros really mean it, every time they say it. True surfing must be done at least partly for intrinsic motivations, but they come easily, especially in the world’s best waves.*13

  Playing

  If all sports are played for their own sakes, at least partly, they differ from each other in calling upon different adaptive attunements, under very different conditions. They also differ in spontaneity or playfulness.

  In golf, the awkward bodily twist must be adapted with fine-grained adjustments, for each new fairway, green, and stroke, in a relatively fixed environment. Unlike with surfing, there’s no expectation of constant bodily adaptation in an ever-changing medium, without even terra firma to stand on.*14 The changing wind may call for fine-tuning, but like archery the adaptive challenges beyond a certain skill level are therefore mainly psychological. An attuned performance requires a sound “mental game,” which according to one guide includes “clarity, commitment, and composure” in preparation and “feeling confident, focused, and in the flow, with body and mind synchronized in the present moment” in action.*15

  Ballet is also performed on a fixed field of play, the stage. The dancers don’t adapt to a changing dance space, but attune to each other in each new moment of the music, movement, or ensemble. If we can talk of “flow” generally in degrees of perfection, the “social flow” achieved in the amazing spectacle rivals and often surpasses the natural flow in surfing. Yet surfing and ballet are very different in ambition. Surfing permits a rawer, natural spontaneity. Ballet’s coordination is ultimately an orchestrated appearance of natural flow, for the sake of a wonderful performance. The inspired performances stand at the zenith of human athletic attunement, but not because a flow state of effortless action is being achieved. The routines are born of incredible rigor, in each disciplined move of each body, in each dancer’s streak through the choreography, after inordinate hours of sweat, in constant muscle pain, with exquisite attention to detail. Even at the peak of performance, the seemingly effortless dance is in fact immensely effortful. The art lies in creating a flow spectacle from what in fact involves a hell of a lot of work.*16

  Surfing also takes work; you paddle a lot, maybe constantly if there’s a strong current. Yet you rest often, and the constantly shifting wave environment precludes any very meticulous orchestration. There can’t be a routine, which is freeing for those with control fatigue. You can relax and let loose, taking each wave as it comes with a natural authenticity that has its own human kind of beauty.

  For its playful, improvisational nature, surfing is perhaps more similar to basketball and especially jazz improvisation. Each activity demands moment-by-moment adaptation, often with little time for planning and forethought. Yet the improvisation is attunedly guided. Each next move is understood in light of the one prior, and the ones coming up. There’s the memory of how things have so far unfolded; an expectation of what will follow; ideas about where things might be taken; a sense of what to go for generally, and the different ways to go for it.

  The basketball player’s “no-look pass” comes in expectation of his or her teammate’s approaching for the dunk, perhaps at a time in the game that permits the risky gambit. The jazz drummer “lays in the pocket,” waiting in anticipation of where the soloist is headed, starting a phrase to help express his or her idea of the moment’s music. The surfer “coasts” through a mounting section, taking the high line while the wave face is building, before down weighting in a crouch and then doing a snap on the other side of the quickly steepening section.

  Neither the player nor the surfer is “doing nothing,” not with the complete passivity of the Zen archer’s bow release. For being and staying present, especially while waiting, is improvisation’s active motion, the very action of attunement. In surfing and in music making, by giving ourselves to the moment we can transcend ourselves in attunement to the larger movement.

  Meaning in Life

  So I can flow out of myself by imagination in what Kant calls a “free play” of my faculties, in a “free harmony” of thought and feeling that is something like the bodily harmony of the surfer in riding a wave. Call it mind surfing or daydreaming or whatever, but it seems rather good as a way to live and be.

  Of course, even if we play games and sports for intrinsic reasons, the appearance of intrinsic value could be a delusion brought on by an electrolyte imbalance or too much sun. For Camus, our plight is simply to cope, and coping is easier when one acts as if something were intrinsically worth doing, when in fact nothing has any extrinsic or intrinsic value. We gave an answer in chapter 4: our existential predicament is that of having to define ourselves with too many worthy choices in a rich plenum of values. Yet this does not quite answer Camus’s question of suicide as he himself understood it. His own test of a question’s urgency is the “actions it entails,” and, he notes, “I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living” in acts of suicide “prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art.”*17 What can philosophy say to them?

  Perhaps not much. If the philosopher must “preach by example,” as Camus says, I would recommend surfing and sunshine, along with a good therapist, and maybe travel. On the other hand, if we are to judge the importance of a question by real action, as Camus suggests, then it is relevant to consider our natural motivations, including among non-depressives. And while the human spirit can be defiant in self-assertion, it is also fundamentally playful. Animals of course play—romping puppies pretend not to bite, and dolphins in their own way surf.*18 As animals ourselves, we can transcend what is routine or oppressive in human culture, by living playfully.*19 As the cultural theorist Johan Huizinga explains, play for Homo ludens is prior to all human ritual and culture, but therefore a means of transforming serious adult business. “In play we may move below the level of the serious, as the child does; but we can also move above it, in the realm of the beautiful and the sacred.”*20

  A child is acting like an elephant, hunched over, lumbering forward with a heavy gait, arm outstretched, dangling in sway like a trunk. Only a spoilsport won’t play along with the imaginative pretense. It is merely a pretense, of course. It would be true, albeit rather obtuse, to say to the child, “You aren’t really an elephant. You’re a human.” The child is not confused. What she really believes in is the value of play, and nearly all of us agree. Whether in make-believe, a game of Parcheesi, or a day in the waves, play is worth doing for its own sake. That claim of value is not mere pretense, and if the spoilsport attempts to deny it, it is he who would seem to be missing something. What could be more human than getting caught up in a game, sport, or creative project with little thought of anything else, finding this a very good thing?

  A few kids play soccer/fútbol, passing a lovely afternoon, finding it really satisfying to kick a ball, booting the thing squarely from underneath. Because, why not? It’s the sort of thing one really should try at some point before one’s death, along with dragging paint across a large canvas, reading many great books, and being taken along by a wave (even on a boogie board in tiny waves, if you can’t swing the long process of learning to surf). There’s a lot to do, a lot that really is worth doing with one’s limited time under the sun. Doing it can have no pretense of greater meaning, no risk of the absurd’s gap between pretense and reality, no risk of cosmic mistake. With a few friends going surfing and the forecast portending an epic session, none of them will pause to consider Camus’s question of whether life is worthy of being continued before the swell hits. Suicide, if someone did think of it, would definitely have to wait until later, maybe much later. Even a depressingly long flat spell will be over by the time you’ve caught up on the work you neglected during the last swell. The swells vary with the seasons, but the lapping waves and crashing breakers keep coming in the ocean’s steady rhythm. For the surfer, this is meaning in life, and all the meaning needed to keep on living from week to week, year to year, in a fortunate life.

  Surfing is sport, but not that alone. It can be as totalizing as a religion, by organizing one’s whole existence. It is not just absorbing in the engaged moments, as with a novelty item or hobby; once you lose yourself in the pursuit, you can lose your life to it, and count yourself fortunate. Surfing is so intrinsically wonderful that I want to be, rather than not, just to be present when it happens. How fortunate I am—for the confluence of circumstances when I started surfing, for the lucky breaks that let me keep going, and now for the years behind me. My good fortunes have vested, my wealth banked, my time under the sun blessed, whatever happens next. The past being past, not even God can change it. And while death will happen, maybe sooner than expected, maybe in some gnarly accident, it’s all good for the already fortunate. The days or years or decades remaining are gravy.*21

  I could of course dwell on the fact that I will die eventually, asking myself whether I’m living worthily with time so short. I could contentedly answer that, yes, indeed, this, this day, this nice week, was well spent surfing, if I did ask. Heidegger thought being “authentic” meant living in that question, constantly asking whether one’s actions are worthy in the shadow of one’s demise (what he called “being-toward-death”). This for him is to live without denial, without needing distraction or dreams of eternal life to get the week to make sense. But in all the surfer tales of death and other gnarliness, and despite having a ready answer to the personal question of meaning, surfers don’t constantly ask themselves whether a week or year or decade of surfing could make sense given the shortness of life. Maybe it’s that the answer is too obvious for the question. “Of course!” is the answer, of course, so why ask? More likely, such self-preoccupation is untrue to the moment, to the fine swells marching in, or to the upcoming week’s waves. When the waves are pumping, day after day, and surfers begin to comment on their special fortune, the sense of the extraordinary beauty of life, enjoyed in such abundance, isn’t about oneself. You’re stoked just to be there and partake of it, and if someone mentioned it, you could just shrug death off. “Yup, of course. But no worries. Check this insane next wave! I guess I will surf again.”

  —

  So we can and do find self-transcendent presence in ordinary hobbies, games, sports, and music. We can lose ourselves by engaging them for the sake of those activities themselves. And when or if one can square them with work, pursuits like surfing, ballet, and jazz play really can transcend mere “leisurely” preoccupations and organize a whole life. Could they even organize the whole, or at least the better part, of social life?