James N. Weiss, MD

The Surfer

Growing up in a small inland town in New Jersey, my introduction to surfing didn’t occur until medical school, when I befriended an undergraduate working in the same research lab. George had spent most of his summers at his family’s vacation house on the Jersey shore and was an avid surfer. When I visited one summer weekend, George gave me my first surfing lesson. Although I never had the time to learn properly back then, six years later when George heard that i) I was getting married and ii) moving to Los Angeles for my cardiology training, his wedding gift was a surfboard. I remember cursing George under my breath as I carted his bulky gift through JFK airport and was charged an arm and a leg to transport it.

When we arrived in Los Angeles, I promptly stuck the surfboard in a closet, and it wasn’t until 6 months later that I decided that I owed it to George to give it a try. From that day on, I was hooked and surfing became a passion for me, not just for the exercise but for the serenity of floating in the ocean and letting one’s thoughts roam.

In fact, many of the ideas for The Surfer and the Sea Lion germinated while I was floating in the ocean, lost in thought waiting for the next wave to appear.  On one of those occasions, a sea lion did surreptitiously slide onto the back of my surfboard, just as described in the Prologue.  And my reaction was to panic.  Although the sea lion had not caused me to fall off a wave as described in the semi-fictional account in the Prologue, the Conversation about Being is what I fancifully imagined might have ensued had the sea lion begun to speak.