Ram Dass, Dumbbells, and Decay | PASSAGES :013
"Death is inevitable for the living" -Bhagavad Gita
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"Death is inevitable for the living"
-Bhagavad Gita 2:27
A year and a half ago I couldn't do a single pull-up. In fact, I’m not sure I had ever completed one in my entire life. I certainly remember failing to pull my chin over the bar every year in grade school during the annual Presidential Physical Fitness test while other kids knocked out six or eight or more pull-ups. Fortunately, I was a god when it came to the “sit-and-reach” challenge!
Anyways, eighteen months ago I was in good shape from regular trail running, pushups, and some fairly intense online workouts that Cherie and I had religiously dedicated ourselves to during the pandemic—in our driveway, snow or shine! But I hadn’t really done any regular weight training in over 15 years. So I decided it was time to mix things up in my workout routine and I joined the community fitness center only two blocks from our house (bonus!). On my first day there, this thought came to me:
It would be fun to be able to do a pull-up.
Fast forward to today—many workouts later—and I can do multiple pull-ups (though they’re not always fun!). Achieving new physical feats is awesome and all, but this is all just a lead-in for the other, more interesting thing I’ve learned at the gym in the past eighteen months.
You see, the gym hasn’t just shown me my strength. It has shown me my frailty.
There are a few reasons for this. First of all, it is because who is at the gym. This isn’t exactly a hip, high-octane place for bodybuilders or fitness influencers. It is a community fitness center, after all. Which means it is made up of everyday people who are more interested in staying healthy than getting shredded. Most mornings, it feels like it’s just a few pubescent middle school boys, senior citizens, and me—who, agewise, falls smack-dab in the middle of these two groups. While I may be getting stronger and awakening my long-dormant pull-up game, it’s hard to be in this setting and not be aware that at forty-three, my body—bones, muscle, and more—is already over a decade into a steady process of decline that ends in the grave (yes, I’m sure Peter Attia and maybe even Chris Hemsworth could add more nuance to this).
The second way my experience at the fitness center has acquainted me with my frailty is because of what I’ve been listening to during all of my early morning workouts. No, it’s not the heavy metal of Black Sabbath or hard rock of Van Halen (Sammy Hagar > David Lee Roth, anyday) that got my high school football teammates and me pumped up in the weight room. It’s not the latest hip hop beats to wake me up and energize me. Nor is it this awesome hype song. Usually, it is a quiet, deep spiritual talk of some sort. Something exploring the nature of reality. Or mystical experience. Or about love and suffering and non-attachment and the unity underlying everything. Specifically, for the first six months or so, I tuned into talks from deceased psychedelic-explorer turned eastern mystic guru turned hospice companion and spiritual teacher Ram Dass.
Long before his death in 2019 and his stroke in 1997 that led to partial paralysis and expressive aphasia, Ram Dass—born Richard Alpert and, later, somewhat affectionately called “Rum Dum” by his father—was already talking a lot about suffering. About aging. About death. So there I would be, engaging in the somewhat death-defying (or, at least, mortality-reducing) act of lifting weights, while listening to talks on the power and freedom that comes from embracing our mortality. It was Rum Dum and dumbbells for me, most mornings.
The third reason the gym got me in touch with my frailty was because of something I was up to outside of the gym. Around the same time I began my pull-up quest, I also started to volunteer as a hospice companion. Every week I would visit a couple people in their final stage of life who were assigned to my care. They were never far from my mind on those early mornings as I lifted weights, especially when I was listening to Rum Dum talk about dying.
The former art teacher, upright in his wheelchair and conversational one week. And the next, gaunt and bed-ridden. Staring at the ceiling and crying out, “I see horses.”
The ninety-nine year-old woman, seemingly forgotten, who I kept vigil with in the corner of a dim, unfurnished room at the senior living facility, holding her hand as the birds chirped outside the window.
The kindest man—the same age as my dad—approaching death after a long battle with brain cancer. Together with his loving wife, who was his primary caretaker, we would sit in the living room, half-occupied by his hospital bed, and talk over the hum of the air filtration machine about Seattle (where we both used to live), the consistency of a proper coffee, and his achievements and regrets.
And then there was the woman at the memory care facility with frontotemporal dementia. Non-verbal, disoriented, and always jerking her head around. I would grab her hand, which she would always adjust immediately to interlace our fingers, and accompany her as she walked endless laps around the hallway. Eventually, I would tuck her into bed, devastatingly, beneath the photos of the children she no longer remembered. Two toddlers. She was only thirty-seven.
* * *
It’s a strange thing to look at yourself in the mirror—I mean, to really look at yourself. It’s not something most of us do mindfully. I sure don’t. But beginning during this season of being steeped in mortality at the gym, every so often I’ll be standing in front of the mirror during a workout—perhaps catching my breath after a few midlife pull-ups or watching myself to ensure I’m employing the proper form as I strain to get one more rep in—when, spontaneously, I will see myself. Not the gym-rat-flexing-their-biceps kind of seeing. I mean, really seeing myself.
I see the life in me, and the death.
The strength, and the frailty.
The eternal, and the ephemeral.
I embrace it all.
I become overwhelmed with gratitude for the gift of my life—and for all of the lives, young and old, moving our strengthened, weakening bodies around the gym and in the world beyond its walls.
And often, with these interwoven contradictions on my mind, I laugh too, thinking to myself something similar to what Ram Dass once said:
“I’m decaying quite nicely.”
(Love this song, though not all the lyrics fit what I’m getting at in this post)
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To get more of my thoughts on facing death, check out my new book The Way Home: Discovering the Hero’s Journey to Wholeness at Midlife.
thank you for your service in hospice... reading your words i had a thought that hospice volunteering should be a requisite for turning forty. then again at fifty. it's one of the most uplifting experiences a human being can have, and so few talk about it openly. thank you brother. and "decaying quite nicely" i'm keeping.