Riding the Edge of Uncertainty

I had planned the trip around a swell that never arrived. For four days, the ocean stayed flat, glassy, indifferent to the itinerary I had built around it.

What I got instead was something closer to the point: hours of paddling out to nothing, watching the horizon for a set that wasn't coming, and slowly realizing that the waiting was not a delay to the trip. It was the trip.

Every surfer will tell you the same thing eventually — you don't ride the wave you wanted, you ride the one that shows up. It turns out that's also decent advice for everything else.