What the Tides Taught Us

Siargo: harvesting humanity’s harmony amid the spray of humble home breaks.

Siargao, a poetic, ocean-bound piece of the Filipino archipelago. A small stretch of eastern coastline that holds the home of hope for surfing harmony. The surf breaks hugging the land—Cloud 9, Stimpy’s, Rock Island, Quicksilver, Cemetery, Salvacion, and Pacifico draw out land-based beings to complete immersion, every day. The hum of rustic, simplistic boat motors become the repetitive transport to these living reefs, to which the swell lines are devoted.

This is a fragment of a story, just as Siargao is a fragment of the Philippines, and with that we must remember: sometimes it is the smallest parts that create an entirely new configuration of the whole.  

Every interaction matters—the smile to a new surfer in the lineup, a nod of the head to gesture that the wave is now theirs, the openness to the conversations in the ocean’s waiting room, and the way we choose to thank the ocean before every exit.

The outcome of an ecosystem—of nature, people, and societies—depends on the individual parts that create the whole. Hope is the harmony of any ecosystem, and it lies in the remembrance of our connection, of our capacity to co-exist with all fragments. The depth of the life we are given equals the depth of our remembrance. 

The locals of this island understand an equilibrium of receiving and giving, recognising the necessary position and placement of ourselves within our experiences to maintain balance. Their expression and relation to one another outweigh the trivial pull toward co-existing with decline—the tendency to pull the ecosystem apart instead of assisting it to remain connected.

All it takes is a fragment of hope to reconfigure the whole, and this island is the world’s compass for reconciliation.

This story details a group of four female surfers, who travelled together to Sairgo, and rediscovered hope—for the drifting tides of surfing culture and for the life we are collectively living. They found the seed of our Earth’s race toward harmony along Siargao’s shores.

Surfers Featured: Emma Roesler, Taylah Nasr and Alex Day (Instagram @emmaroesler_, @tepinnyaki, @alexdaay)

It’s the 27th of November, 2025, and the tropics, Siargao’s equatorial home, are exiting their typhoon season. With the exit comes a plateau in their intense weather patterns: feverish monsoon downpours and howling winds. Luckily, the winds now swing offshore, and the needed southeast swell arrives with increasing height as the island enters its peak season.

It’s a delicate balance—between wind, swell, and the ideal conditions that allow a break to reach perfection—and a privilege, an opportunity, to be nowhere in the world but here, fully immersed in it.

Our first morning on the Island brought us to one of the most well-known left-hand point breaks: Stimpys. A wooden boat with just enough space for the necessities like the inseparable partnership of surfer and surfboard, paced us 20 minutes outward, towards the origin of swell. The motor overrode conversation, and the ocean’s spray wiped us clean of memory, self, and worry. We were cleansed of our chase to be human. Paralleling a handful of boats on the same journey towards themselves, the local boatman and surfer dropped the anchor, our boards collided with their home, and we moved towards our freedom. Paddling towards the 3–4 ft lines that start their formation of becoming a relationship between ride and rider from a small but high-reaching rock island, we took our place in the lineup.

Looking back towards our quiver of friends, all finding their place in the orchestra of nature, we smiled at each other, knowing life on this formation of liquid is what reminds us that everything is possible.

Catching the corner of my eye, a few locals paddle beside me, returning from their last wave and placing themselves back into the rotating priority of waves we all respect. It was Mike and Palem, two locals I had surfed with at one of the most beautiful creations I had seen the ocean paint—a right-handed, peeling wave from another crumb of the island that had drifted into separation from the mainland. The well-known eclipse of boundaries—human and nature, being and moving—the break was situated in the middle of the eastern coastline, a sibling of the south and north breaks, its human-gifted name: Salvacion.

Bliss beaming upon their faces, I said hello, and they greeted me by remembering the yesterday we all attempt to remember in order to keep our faith in tomorrow. “Go, Alex,” Mike suddenly called to me, as if the wave were his alone. A set wave had escaped our observation as we spoke. It was going to be abrupt, fast, and I knew I had to be quick. Turning my board to the peak, I paddled with so much comfort in life: all from Mikey calling me to a wave that he could have taken.

It seemed too simple, too ordinary—an occurrence that could happen in any aspect of life—so why did it carry such weight? Because in that moment, there was no sense of gain or loss. I recognised a happiness not bound to possession or advantage, but to shared existence. His happiness did not stand apart from mine; it moved with it. I knew he was glad for me to encounter the very longing that draws us all into open water. I knew his joy was not diminished by my own but completed by it. Nothing felt owned, only shared. In feeling his joy for my experience, I understood that this was not merely personal kindness, but a belief in a collective good—an ethic of joy meant for all. The world’s compass for reconciliation.

As the peak connected with my board, I felt myself no longer in control. The forward motion of a wave now being the creator of my experience is one I long for every day. I met my desire and I let go. Looking towards the face of the now vertical wave, I allowed my mind to cease existing and my being to take over. This, I knew, was what every wave asked of me. The soles of my feet gently caressed the heart of my board, and in that, I heard Mike say, “Alex, watch out.” Now too committed to see any other line but a full partnership with the face of the unbroken ocean, I understood that Palem was less than arm’s reach beside me, on my outside, also committed to his desires through a drop in.

A more experienced surfer, a child of this parental wave, he moved down the line and allowed it to see him grow. I, a guest to this ocean’s living room, felt no other option with the embodied knowledge and skill set I had but to remove the soles of my feet from the heart of my board. To allow Mother Nature to humble me in the intense whitewash of collapse. Momentarily allowing my body to become limp so I did not become resistant to the complete rolling I was receiving, I felt my legs try to meet the shallow reef below, my lungs reminding themselves they will come to the surface, and my hands embrace my head so that injury did not prevail. Feeling the ocean’s conversation ease, I swam to the surface, my hands breaking the top of the water first to feel for any barricades in my impending meeting with the air—board, surfers, or leg ropes. As I emerged, I intuitively looked to the lineup, the origin of our desires. 

Life is a house built on structures we cannot control. Change is a door we must keep open and never lock. Swell lines and the playground of salt we devote ourselves to are both of these things.

There were four more set waves following the first. They all travelled toward me like a child in the rain, untamed, pure, and a danger to human minds because of their freedom. 

I initiated the pull of my board, attempting to reconnect and navigate such furious beauty. I adored the rupture of my control at the knees of nature’s obscurity.

Making my way under and over the companions of my first unmade love for the day, I manoeuvred into the clearing, where the lineup felt like a different world of calm in comparison to the turbulence of their endings.

The bridges we draw from beginnings to endings, where our love and experiences seem to start and stop, ask us to renew our faith in what remains unknown in the other and in the chasm between our desires and the truths that lie beyond them. Perhaps nothing ever truly begins or ends; it simply morphs into a new freedom, allowing us to give to life what we once thought could exist in only one place, with one person, at one time. Everything we receive may be intended for giving, and in this, nothing truly begins or concludes. Life simply transforms into a freedom we have never before attempted to love.

As I transitioned from lying to sitting on my board, I heard drifting from behind me, “I’m so sorry, Alex.” I turned back to see Palem paddling towards me with honest regret. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you.” An open book of how life would truly like us to live, a transcript of the ocean rewriting our human flaws back to the page. “Was it a good wave?” I said to him, with the simple feeling of happiness being the only thing known to me. Happiness for another: to have satisfied the sometimes-insatiable yearning to connect to the purity of our existence through a godly nature that asks nothing beyond participation in its order. He smiled as if life were his playground, as if tribulation could be swept away by every wave. His smile said it all. I didn’t need his words to understand him.

Waves will always repeat themselves. The sun will rise and fall, and the moon will disappear. Loss will follow gain, and human minds will forever attempt to hold what is destined to change. Yet the opportunity to gift the happiness of experience to another feels like a choice, not an inherent aspect of coexisting, even though it should be. In that moment, I remembered that I only ever desire to gift what I have to the other.

Leaning over the front of my board, I felt my upper limbs, open like a bird about to return home, begin to paddle again. My heart and the board both knew it was time to start syncing again with another of the ocean’s heartbeats. As I gazed past the ridged yet lively reef below me, I sensed the entire line-up drifting towards what life always has in store: another opportunity to both connect with and embrace it.

No matter the yesterday that drifts into today. No matter the memories we long to reshape or release. No matter the triumphs or tragedies upon which we lay the weight of meaning: in the collapse of time, in the endless unfolding of life’s wave, we are offered the ever-renewing present—a chance to begin again, simply, without grasping. Life is a garden of play we must learn to tend to, free from the burden of attachment, failure, or outcome. 

There is a sense beyond the mind when surfers drift on the open waters. We can feel it before we see it, the experiences life is about to give us. Perhaps it is because we remember how to remain in communion with the world of the infinite rather than the short-lived human trying to figure out how to live and coexist with it.  

Another set wave, after an almost non-existent lul has brought movement upon us all. Like ants crawling towards their creator, every individual surfer held the same persona: fast but controlled, fluid but eternally focused; because losing one’s connection to what is unfolding around them is one sure way to forget how to ride with the heartbeats of life.

I saw Mike on the inside of me, harnessing priority for what every sun-kissed soul wants out on the expansive lifeline. I saw him pivot from the onlooker to the one being observed by the wave. Facing away from the direction of incoming swell, I saw his awareness start to pencil in the lines of what the wave is about to write—those he knows he must follow. He smiled at the ocean, and my heart remembered true freedom.

As Mike started to increase his speed, the shape of the wave asked me a question, and I answered it. A beautiful surfer, I knew Mike could make the possible closeout or at least give it everything he had accumulated within his life of riding his home waves I was a visitor to.

Respect, out on these open waters, should not just be primitive, intuitive, a god we bow down to, but also essential to the clockwork of maintaining surfing purity: the truth that the ocean’s waves are simply there to allow us to remember what life asks of us. We ride them for endless moments each day so we do not forget. 

How to be in complete communion with another, with all that lies on the horizon of our perception, without clinging to the idea of self. How to remain surrendered to the mirror we project onto life—a person who only seems present when we are holding too tightly.

I chose to sit in between the answer and the question, perhaps the only path that grants us complete freedom. As we wait for the conclusion, for our expectations to meet us, the tidal days move and change.

I mimicked Mike, turning my back to my lifeline. If he had pulled back, deciding not to take the freefall into complete presence, I would have initiated priority. The wave grabbed us both, and life no longer felt at our beck and call; what a gift. “Go, go,” I heard from Mike. Making the definite conclusion that there had been another with priority I had not seen on his inside, I decided to answer when I met the moment. I pulled back, and I saw Mike drop into the indecision of true connection. Looking through the lineup, he sprayed the lineup, showering them like a well-tended-to garden, and my mind loved the fertility surfers brought back to the rainforests we have destroyed.

Vertical again on my board, the next in line, and my hands in my lap, I gazed into the waters ahead of me. Stillness, silence, like the noise of the sun lighting the view of life, my mind stopped asking questions. I could not have asked for anything more, and perhaps that is why surfing is the greatest yearning that moves me through time.

Minutes that feel like the collapse of time pass; the ocean is a time machine of presence, and I saw Mike paddle up beside me like a long-lost friend. How such a mutual desire to know life through surfing, grants us the understanding of how to know another so quickly.  Perhaps it is because it reminds us we are all searching for the same truths in life, or maybe how to manage the lies our disconnection breeds. How to triumph over the self and dissolve back into its existing state. Understanding is the gateway to connection.

“You should have gone,” Mike smiled at me. Confused, I spoke through the onshore winds starting to question our sense of control: “I thought you were talking to someone on your inside.” His presence absolute, Mike laughed in rhythm with life, “No, he sings,” followed by the humbling honesty, “If you want it, take it.” Eyes wide, heart transparent, mind sunken below the horizon of our boards, he was the purity of ocean waves.

The wind felt like hope on my skin, and the freedom from everything that once lived within reach of my memory’s fingertips let go. My smile is one of faith, the motion of this world’s momentum, and I sung back to him, “If you want it, take it.” Suddenly, we became a harmony of life’s perspective, and we both become the music of human yearning: to explore life as a playground of freedom, where play and presence are the hope that we never give up on. Where we are no longer two, fighting for priority, position, or the hierarchy of better or worse, this and that, them and us, but simply a serving of being the same hand shaped in different ways.

All we need is a fragment of a story to be drawn back into the purpose of the whole. To hold one piece of life in order and for it to change the configuration of everything it knows. It was only a drop of sand in the hourglass of life that was spent in the water that morning, and yet its impact on the relationship between all the remaining grains will never be forgotten.

 Every moment in which we present ourselves—to the world, to another, to the nocturnal love we know is bound to be stateless—is pivotal in the unfolding of cause and effect. The hourglass now bears witness to an inseparable way of living, and every grain that falls along its path toward the eventual end of its purpose forms the same connection with its surroundings.

At some stage we all must return home, whether that be to ourselves, our families, or to what we know can never be taken from the world around us. For these surfers, their return entails one proposition: the humanity that this island still remembers is like nothing they had encountered before. At the least, it is inspiring; at most, it becomes a reckoning with the hopeful beauty we still see in the possibility of coexisting with one another and with the eternal world of which we are merely guests.

The Filipino men and women on solid ground and surf line-ups we sat within for hours every day still hold something our world seems to currently be allowing to slip through the fingertips of our existence: they care. About you and all that surrounds them. They gaze at you, upon meeting, calling for the name you hold, where you come from, curious to know some small part of your whole, and they mean it. By being fully themselves, they offer their integrity to us all—living, drawing lines across the surrounding waves and into the notebooks that record our attempts to remain whole, rather than fractured, and to remember our interconnected truth.

The fragment of this story finishes telling itself, and yet it all remains, because the passing of time does not end when the clock ticks over. Time remains etched within our perception, quietly reshaping the way we inhabit this world. The impact of moments follows one another, like waves moving toward the shore.

So we move on, returning home to the Eastern Coastline of Australia, and the empty swell breaks, boat rides to perfectly peeling point breaks, the reflection of reefs beneath our leg ropes, feverish monsoon downpours, motorbike rides tracing the translucent, humble shacks that shape scattered communities, and conversations with others that remind us how similar our differences truly are—all remain.

While they stay, the impact of their existence follows, and as a small part of the whole, each individual surfer now has the possibility to reshape the configuration of the world. The perceptions of these surfers have shifted, and in that, the way they relate to the ecosystem of life, including themselves, one another and nature, has altered.