To Protect and Care for Water

In conversation with Easkey Britton, marine social scientist and founder of Like Water

Monika Jiang
Journal of Beautiful Business

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Legend has it that in the 1960s, Easkey’s grandmother, a hotel owner, returned to Ireland from a visit to California, determined to bring two Malibu surfboards back to her local beach, Rossnowlagh. The plan, such as it was, worked. Easkey Britton was the first Irish woman nominated for the Global WSL Big Wave Awards, holds a PhD in environment and society, and is the founder of Like Water. We spoke with her in light of World Water Day on March 22, and in reflection on the House of Beautiful Business 2020 theme “The Great Wave.”

Easkey, when did you start your relationship with the ocean? And how would you describe it today?

I grew up with a “blue heritage,” born into a surfing way of life on the Northwest coast of Ireland, to surfing parents and the beach on my doorstep. I heard family stories of our connection to the sea, and I have been standing on a surfboard since the age of four. My name, Easkey, has its origins in ancient Gaelic for fish. I’m named after a salmon river in Ireland that creates a beautiful wave where it flows into the sea; it is my father’s favorite surf spot.

My name reminds me that my identity is tied to water. All of our identities are inextricably linked to the sea. We have all been shaped and formed by the ocean.

The sea continues to shape my life — both daily, with my schedule dictated by weather patterns, tides, and swell forecasts — and my calling in life, to be in service to water.

Which part of surfing do you enjoy the most?

That’s such an interesting question. The whole experience of surfing is fluid and dynamic, so it’s hard to pull any one element out.

I suppose two things come to mind:

That initial crossing of the threshold from land to sea, the first splash of cold water from a wave on my face — I immediately feel different, more alive.

And then there is act of wave-riding, the sense of effortless flow when it all aligns — the feeling of complete presence. It’s not that the sense of a separate self is gone. It’s more like my sense of self expands to take in, or become part of, or fused with, all of these other elements in a living, breathing ocean — the water, wave energy, wind, tide, moon, rocky reef, surfboard, sea life…

What drew you to big-wave surfing?

What drew me to big-wave surfing in the beginning was a desire to get away from the external pressures — the expectations and judgements — of competitive, performance surfing, and to strip it all back to the essence of surfing, for me: that intimate, visceral connection with the sea, between the surfer and a wave. Any pressure I felt was internal, which meant I had to confront my own fears and emotional weather patterns.

This required a lot of mental training and preparation, and it opened me up to a mindfulness-based practice and ultimately a greater attunement to my own body that I hadn’t felt before. That was in the early days, when we were still pioneering big-wave surfing in Ireland and it hadn’t received the huge attention and global platform it has now. Which adds another dynamic to it. And I’m sure I’ll find that intimacy with it again.

Can you share a story of a moment of the ultimate surrender?

I think moments of ultimate surrender can happen at any moment. They don’t have to be grand, or life-threatening, or require huge waves. Although there’s nothing like a 20-foot wave bearing down on you to install an immediate and visceral sense of presence!

Ultimate surrender is the letting go of expectations, judgements, even desires. It requires a softening into rather than standing firm or pushing hard or striving. One moment of surrender, of pause, that comes to mind for me is last summer. I was suspended in the sea off the Atlantic coast of Ireland, hovering 6 meters below the surface above a beautiful little shark resting in a forest of kelp, staying for as long as my breath would allow. It felt amniotic, womb-like. The memory sustained me for the rest of the year.

Imagine if we could sense the world as the shark does, using her fifth sense to feel the electro-magnetic fields of the earth.

What is the ocean teaching you?

My Dad calls the ocean the school of life. The ocean constantly teaches me how to be in the world. Surfing isn’t all about riding waves. Actually 90% of time you aren’t surfing a wave at all but waiting, preparing, observing.

It has taught me that it takes more than actions to generate change. We also need to cultivate a deep level of listening, to reflect on and reconnect with what matters most, to allow for new ways of noticing to emerge. That’s important in an increasingly distracted, scared world.

The ocean has also shown me again and again how interconnected and interdependent everything is. That we, humanity, depend utterly on the ocean as our life support system, and that the ocean’s health depends on each of us taking sustainable actions, living with greater appreciation for the ocean and all water. To protect, respect, and care for water. And to ask the water for forgiveness, so that we can begin to heal — not only heal the ocean, but to heal ourselves.

Like Water

Listen to Easkey’s poem “A Lunar Cycle” in the upcoming Living Room Session “My Drop in the Ocean — A World Water Day Special” this Sunday, March 22.

Monika Jiang is the head of content and community at The Business Romantic Society and a co-curator of the House of Beautiful Business.

The Journal is a production of The Business Romantic Society, hosts of the House of Beautiful Business.

The House can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram, and in Lisbon, Portugal from October 31– November 3, 2020. Please apply for House Residency here.

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