The Rules of Stoke
By Sarah Ruhlen
Losing the agenda, learning to define my own stoke in life and to find it everywhere, overcoming the depression amoeba, why I can’t quit paddling.
This is probably the longest I’ve gone without posting my writing, my thoughts. It’s not that I haven’t had any, or haven’t known what to say, I’ve just been waiting. I want to give out a message that hits home and connects with people. I want to share what I’ve found, and let other people see that if that’s what they see too, they’re not alone.
At some point, I woke up one morning, and realized I was living the life I’d always dreamed of while growing up. The little girl who sat there and imagined what her life would look like as a 21 year old – yeah, I’m mostly there. Being where I am, with the life I’ve created and am fortunate enough to be able to live, each wrong path, every bit of love lost, all of the baggage I think I carry – becomes inconsequential. In the light of a life where I get to do what I love with the people I love, people who are unapologetic in their love of themselves and acceptance for every piece of a person, there are certain realizations. I realize that these supposed missteps and inadequacies, they shape and mould and chisel you, but in the end they don’t define you.
It is so hard to be in love with yourself and your choices, with the life you have, or the everyday reality. The world we live in tells us we need others to be in love with us first. It’s like all the stars and and planets have to align, and only then are we permitted to be happy with who and what we are.
You need to run class 5.
You need to weigh less.
You need to take better pictures.
Your video was good, his was better.
They don’t like you as much as you want them to.
He’s not interested, and it’s because of what you’re not. Don’t change though.
Why won’t you paddle that? You know you have the ability.
Each insinuated shortcoming becomes a qualifier, and is added to the “to-do” or “to-become” list. It is added to the agenda. It becomes a reason someone might love you less, or (heaven forbid) in spite of. The anxiety builds. More thoughts follow. Then the numbing of emotions to present a calm exterior. A subtle quashing of the overt OCD. Hold. It. Together.
I think of depression, or at least my own, as an amoeba. My amoeba is fed by anxiety and shortcomings, until eventually it engulfs me. Being surrounded by an amoeba has it perks though. When an amoeba covers you it also covers all your senses. You’re numb, in your own little cocoon, and honestly it’s kinda nice in there — no one can see you. But no one, and nothing can touch you. You can’t feel, see, appreciate. And that is the true danger of depression.
So while I’ve spent a lot of time learning to deal with depression, I’ve also spent a lot of time learning what keeps me from going there in the first place. While it’s always a continuing process, I’m figuring out appreciation and grace with myself beyond the anxiety, and to lose the agenda I usually cling to. I’m learning to be stoked. On everything. Big, small, relevant, ridiculous, irrelevant, reasonable. Earlier this year, I wanted to quit paddling.I kept boating out of obligation and habit. I wasn’t fulfilling my agenda to where I thought I should, or perhaps to where I thought others thought I should. I truly believed I might quit. A big part of me wanted to be able to. But here it was — I couldn’t imagine my life without the community, without my people, my family. I realized my own agenda was pulling from what I really loved from the sport, and from my all around stoke. So I determined I needed to decide what precedent to set for rebuilding my passion. Thus, here: THE RULES OF STOKE.
- There are no qualifiers to life to happiness, except the ones you make yourself. Don’t let anyone else make them for you. You have to have to learn to love your life and to realize what is good in it, even when society would tell you how wrong you are to do so.
- Have goals. Have timelines. Put in the work to make them happen. Make sure they are genuine though, and that they are your own. Take action and do thing for the love of the thing, or the person you are doing them for or with. Do them to give back, to the be bigger than yourself. I think this is where agendas become dreams, which we’re more likely to work for and appreciate when we get there.
- Love other first. Be stoked on them. Be stoked for them. Jealousy has no place in stoke. I get so fired up for my friends when I see them loving life. It reinforces all the good things about this world, when sometimes it seems only the small truths exist and keep things from slipping away.
- Embrace both reality and possibility in equal measure and realize how little control you have over both. Embrace where you are, go ahead and get rid of the shame and external expectations from anyone who isn’t you. Take your family and friends, who love you, and let them give you direction and love.
- Give it away. Stoke is caught. It’s shared. When you’re stoked on someone and what they’re doing, what they’re about-tell them! Be absolute about it, add fuel to their fire. And when you have your own fire, drag others into it with you. Sharing the love something is with another person doesn’t take anything away from you. Give it back where it was first given to you. Golden rule of stoke: Don’t steal stoke when they have it, share yours when you have it, try to kindle it wherever and whenever you can.
- Go out and fine what gets you fired up. What gets your heart pumping, makes you appreciate waking up in the morning and keeps you up late at night? There are those things that make you dance in the car and feel like you should be wearing a cape. What is your “top of the mountain” your “pool below the drop?”
- Finally:Build your own world. Build it with your words, and your intentionos. Back it with your family, time spent in good places and good company, time outside, with good food and plenty of water. Build it with lots of playlists and drives to explore the small things. Build it by doing something each day that you’re not sure you can do. Challenge yourself. Stop comparing. Get rid of the timelines of our society, the qualifiers to success and happiness, the fear of dissatisfaction simply due to what you are not, that maybe someone else is.
- Write your own Rules of Stoke.
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