Guaranteed many surfers invest things in their relationship with the waves that they can't or won't find a home for anywhere else.
It's no coincidence, for example, that all but two of the world pro champions (men and women) since 1976, and a sizeable majority of the high pedigree performance surfers through the period, came from broken or disrupted family backgrounds.
In the end this kind of emotional investment has its limits. Try as you might, you will not get the ocean or the waves to talk back or respond to you in any way at all. Nor will the ocean have your children, nor look after you in your old age.
MP was an extreme case -- his schizophrenia, his drug use, and his bizarre family background made it all but impossible to grow up. But a similar battle awaits almost all brilliant surfers at some point -- they have to learn how to be human, how to fully relate to other humans instead of waves.
It's a tough one and I'm sure we can all think of a few people who haven't made it through the process unscathed. Grumpy old hardcore locals are just one type. One difficulty the Grumpy Local faces is that he can't seem to see other surfers as humans; instead, they're seen as ill-defined threats.
(Which is a roundabout way of saying: Don't bloody come out the Peak!
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