Giving Up the Ghost
On Letting Go.
Life lately feels an awful lot like attending my own funeral.
I’ll be minding my own business when I’m suddenly assailed with long-forgotten memories. For instance, last night some random car pulls into the front yard and says “Hi, I don’t know if you remember us, but we sold you this house!”. Boy did I remember them, and what’re the odds they came by on the day we were listing the house for sale ourselves?!
We shared fond memories and smiles about the joy the house has created, and excitement about who gets to join that legacy next. This was one moment in the midst of many, where it felt like the universe kept pointing back to the places I’ve been and the things that I’ve seen, and it’s asking me what I’ve learned. I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until you died - but then again if this isn’t dying, I don’t know what is.
I’m selling my first home, getting divorced, moving to the other side of the country, dissolving my first LLC to rebuild in a new state, and living alone for the first time in my life… amongst other things like an entirely new local community.. you get the picture.
I’m in a portal between lives, and the ritual is to honor all that came with that life as you let it go. For me that has looked like showering my last chapter with gratitude, tears, love, and affirmation.
Gratitude.
The other day I was prepping our home to be photographed for sale, which is a weird funeral in and of itself. I was deep in my office cleaning out a bunch of old knick-knacks when I found my high school wrestling certificate; a symbol of one of the most difficult and committed chapters of my life.
I had been powerlifting with my friend Jake Paull for a few months and his family was huge on wrestling. One day after back squats it finally came up: “You’re strong and comfortable on a mat” (I had competed at Jiu-Jitsu). “All you need to do is flip your mindset about giving up your back”. That sounded easy enough, so I decided to join the team and made it the goal for my rookie year to compete at States.
With all the weightlifting Jake and I had been doing I had climbed up to around 218lbs - I was a strong boy.
This is important because as you may or may not know, wrestling is a very weight-based sport. Each team gets to build their roster from a set of pre-defined slots, with the high end being 174, 189, 215, and 285lbs. Each team can only have one person in each slot. If your weight crosses the target number, you are disqualified from that match. If you have two people who want to wrestle the same weight, they do a wrestle-off and the winner gets the slot.
215 was the obvious target for me, unfortunately Eddie Fallon (the team captain) wrestled at 215, and I wasn’t looking for trouble. I could stay my current weight and wrestle off Malcom for heavyweight, but he was a true 285 pound big-boy and I really enjoyed my unfractured ribs.
That left me one option, which was to cut (read: lose) 29ish pounds before the end of the season (read: 2 months) and beat Jake in a wrestle-off. Easy enough. I proceeded to cut 25lbs in less than two months by barely eating and training twice a day, I did jumping jacks in saunas, I slept in sleeping bags (It makes you sweat more), oh and on top of all the weight cutting I tore my MCL, got strep throat… and still showed up for every match.
I still remember the scream that came out when I saw 188.9lbs on the scale. I had made weight with one week left in the season. All I needed for my fairytale ending was to wrestle off Jake for the playoff spot. We set up the mat in our home gym, and took it the distance across all three matches.
I lost, on points.
I cried, a lot.
I couldn’t believe it. In the moment, it felt like my whole season was a waste. I had not gotten the outcome I wanted and I could see no alternatives, so I was plunged into momentary darkness where I had to give back all my expectations of how this journey would go.
Tears.
A few months later I was competing with some of the top wrestlers in the entire country at a national tournament in Lake Placid, NY. I had joined an off-season club and gotten way better, but I was still nervous about competing as a rookie against state champions who had been doing sit-throughs and double legs since they were 2 years old. Quick side bar: that Evan from a few months ago could’ve never seen this whole plot-twist of an opportunity coming.
To be clear: The tournament slot was given to me because someone else on our team got sick, and forfeiting that slot would’ve meant hemorrhaging team points. I was brought in to be the sacrificial lamb that slowed the bleeding - my only mission was to survive.
The day before we left for the tournament I got notice that they found someone else to wrestle at my slot of 191 lbs, so I was getting bumped up to wrestle at 215. This meant that after spending weeks dehydrating myself and running a liquid diet I was getting bumped to a weight class 24 lbs higher than my target. There was no way I could put that weight back on in 24 hours. This meant that not only was I outclassed, I was also outsized. The perfect spot for the sacrificial lamb.
To make a long story short - I lost every match. BUT I scored a few solid points against some incredible athletes and I didn’t get pinned once. I honestly don’t remember how the team placed at the end of the tournament, and I honestly don’t know it matters. We were all cheering in the bus on the way home - at the end of the day it wasn’t about winning, it was about showing up fully, which we did.
As I snapped back from high school Evan to 31 year old Evan looking down at the wrestling certificate, I felt an incredible amount of gratitude for that kid and everyone who had supported him on the journey. In the past I’ve seen that impulse as a reason to keep these sentimental objects from past lives - this time was different.
"You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction."
~ Krishna, Bhagavad Gita
Love.
Just two weeks prior to finding the certificate I had found myself in a ceremony unlike anything I had experienced before.
I was in a beautiful hardwood floored room surrounded by 20 other beautiful humans from around the northeast. Yoga mats lined the walls, with each person creating a spot to do their work. The smell of incense filled the room, and the energy was palpable in the air. After mingling amongst ourselves for a bit, the facilitator instructed us to walk counter-clockwise around the altar at the center of the room, pick two cards from the decks spread across the floor, before offering our prayers at the altar.
Honestly, I’ve always been incredibly cynical of any sort of rites and rituals. My mind LOVES to loudly yell “well that doesn’t do anything”, “what could the mechanism be?!” and “this is clearly nonsense”, which makes it hard to enjoy what’s going on.
Thankfully I had recently re-read some of the work of Iamblichus, a Neoplatonic philosopher. He was once asked about the efficacy of “nonsense words" in greek rituals, to which he replied:
"They are not, however, as you think, without signification. Yet they are not to be deciphered, since their very significance lies in their hidden, secret meaning which can be traced back to divine origin. Moreover, though it should be unknown to us, yet this very circumstance is that which is most venerable in it, for it is too excellent to be divided into knowledge." - Iamblichus
He’s saying a lot in there, but my main take-away is “You can trust it without understanding it”.
So back in the ceremony room I consciously chose not to chase the story that it wasn’t working. I surrendered to the experience, quietly standing up from my mat and circling the altar as tears filled my eyes. I felt a weight in my chest, the weight of excitement and curiosity around what was about to happen. I could smell the flowers on the altar and the product I had put in my hair that morning. My senses were alert, and my mind was entirely encapsulated in the experience. This is where magic happens.
I quietly knelt in front of the two card spreads on the floor, my eyes darting between options as my heart quietly played Marco Polo with the deck. As the connection settled I wrestled two cards from their places with my right hand, keeping them face down against my chest as I moved forward to the altar. The tears had gotten stronger, and I was just now realizing that I didn’t have a prayer prepared. I didn’t have a request, I didn’t have anything to offer, I was caught naked in front of God, The Universe, and my Self. Unexpectedly, that felt like exactly where I needed to be.
I could feel my body filling with with gratitude, so I closed my eyes and quietly whispered a few “thank you’s”. As the words left my lips I felt the fear roll off my back and into the hardwood floor where it was absorbed by the earth. Despite not knowing what I was doing, it seemed to be working.
I quietly stood up and walked back to my mat, wiping my tears and flipping over the cards to see what it was I was so thankful for.
As I saw the sun shining upon a give-away ceremony, the tears and gratitude came back in full force. This was what was happening, and it was my job to witness - it even when I didn’t understand it. It was working. Giving away was part of it. I didn’t have to resist the loss, I could embrace it fully. Yes, this is the time where we give our things back.
Affirmation.
I’m back in the present - feeling this certificate which holds the weight of a thousand lifetimes of courage - when I spontaneously get the urge to flip it over and start writing on the back. It was a visceral gushing of love - for that kid, the coaches, the knuckle pushups in the parking lot, the nights sleeping in trash bags, the ringworm, and the many dark rooms that hold the screams of an athletic career. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it said, and honestly the specific words didn’t matter. I poured my heart onto that paper like oil on Jesus’ feet, and I immediately walked outside and lit it on fire.
“I see you. I love you. Thank you. For Everything” I whispered.
As I watched those words return to the sky and ground from whence they came, I was filled with the same gratitude and tears from the ceremony. The same tears from the wrestle-off. The same tears from my birth. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it was working.
The universe quietly asked again; “So with all you have seen, what have you learned?”
I chuckled quietly and tossed the burning paper into the fire pit.
“I am here to give back what I have been given.”
Death to Certainty,
Long Live the Dream.