Last year around this time, Trident wrote a heartwarming article on the science of loving (surfing). This was due to the fact the Surf Science article for the month was uncomfortably close to Valentine’s Day. Just like this year in fact, so go ahead and read it once again here. Friends, this will be Trident’s only concession to Valentine’s Day this times. Two reasons for that. 1. We wrote a Valentine’s themed article last year (duh) and 2. Surf Science articles are all about the hard science of surfing, not hippie dippy stuff like love etc.
Although arguably, that’s part of the human experience which in turn relates to science. Nonetheless, we’ll leave this debate for now. Instead we turn to the focus of today’s article: not quite the opposite of love, but a far more basic and primitive emotion – fear.
2023 began with the first Eddie big wave comp in more than a decade. Just watching some of the footage of the big wave surfing online tended to make Trident pee just a little bit. Indeed, unintentionally soiling oneself is one of the most fundamental reactions to fear.
Fear is useful for survival. Not as useful for one’s underpants though.
Science has identified many species’ evolutionary response to an external threat. For example, facing down a mountain sized wall of water or a mountain sized local screaming at you for an imaginary snaking incident. Your response is basically only Fight or Flight. Now, the Fight response to being hammered by a wave the size of a skyscraper seems silly. Said wave isn’t gonna care if you attempt to headbutt it or ankle tap it then choke it out. No. It’s gonna wash over you with all the thought a bulldozer gives a gogga in its path.
Conversely, the Flight response compels you to get the hell outta Dodge. And funnily enough, while soiling oneself is humiliating – it serves an advantageous function. Getting rid of one’s bodily waste helps to lighten the load so you can run/fly/swim/crawl away faster. Ain’t nature a treat? So when things go disastrously wrong in public after an extra hot peri peri chicken livers from Nando’s, you can always claim you were about to be mugged. Well, that’s Trident’s story and we’re sticking to it.
Fight or Flight – this is how we deal with fear, but it’s not the only way. Using Nando’s peri peri as an example – we all know (or are one ourselves) of people being addicted to chilli. Well, we hate to break it to you fam, but it’s not really the chilli a person craves – it’s the endorphins and adrenaline the body releases to cope with the pain of having lava in one’s mouth. Not to mention what happens at the other end of the digestive tract.
Brain chemicals. Trippy man.
What has that to do with surfing you may ask? Well, the fear inspired by big waves and/or dangerous conditions is one thing, but the release of feel-good chemicals the body creates to deal with said fear is arguably the actual addiction.
Not everyone is a fan of being scared, and that’s ok. At the movies you’ll generally find them in the queue for rom-coms and assorted fluff like that, rather than for movies about demonic clowns or family houses haunted by the spirits of lynched witches.
But, as science has proved – one can get used to being scared – and eventually one actually enjoys fear. To paraphrase the now polarising but classic Game of Thrones, the only time you can be brave is when you’re already scared. Being brave isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the mastery of fear. And Trident will bravely and loudly declare an upset stomach courtesy of Nando’s when faced with surf bigger than 8 feet.
