"Surf's Up"

The beach beneath my feet gave way with each step.  The fine, white sand slipped away from my feet and through my fingers.  The afternoon sun was a red-hot skillet looking for skin to sizzle.  And the waves...the waves were wonderful.  One after another they lined up in the Pacific Ocean and began to roll up towards the shore.  While some simply washed by me others became a frothy pool of power that either propelled me toward the shore or pummeled me beneath the water.  It was both breath-taking and body taxing.

Then there were the surfers, people of all ages paddling out to wait for the bigger waves.  Two days before I had watched the 'surf lesson' for tourists on Waikiki Beach.  The surf board was placed on the sand, a few comments were made about how to paddle out, and then the instructor showed the young girls how to stand on the board.  Then they went into the waves.  This reminded of the many times in my life when I felt like that was all the training I had been given.

Waves can and do scare me.  My understanding is that, to surf, one of the first steps is to face your fears and let some good sized waves hit you and move you.  You discover you can survive the waves.  Then you paddle out to the waves surfers enjoy and stand up and ride the frothy waters.  You don't paddle to shore as the waves get bigger or wait for the ocean to calm down.

Well, the economic surf is up, one large wave after another lining up and rolling towards us.  The 'surfers', the investors and advisers, seem to be looking at the waves with increasing fear (which may be reasonable since I know little about this except that some of my investments seem to be slipping through my hands like fine sand).  They are deciding they cannot ride these waves so they sell and settle and wait for calmer seas.  Like us, they are scared.  We may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy-we can't ride these waves so we don't and it seems more and more like we can't ride them.

I don't know much about investing and I know even less about surfing.  The surfers I saw believed in themselves and looked for the challenge of bigger waves, whether they wiped out or not.  Maybe if all of us who are 'economic surfers' would take a couple of deep breaths, paddle out and see what we can do, the waves would not seem so frightening.

For those of you with a religious bent, I remind you of words of faith written generations ago in a most uncertain and fearful time: "God is both refuge and strength for us, a help always ready in trouble; so we shall not be afraid though the earth be in turmoil, though mountains tumble into the depth of the sea, and its waters roar and seethe; and the mountains totter as it heaves."  (Psalm 46:1-3).  Surf's Up!  Time to paddle out, face our fears, and catch a wave!