Our Fathers’ Sons

Recently I was talking to a couple of my uncles about men’s health and I said that it seemed like the fathers of the baby boom generation generally weren’t into exercise once they reached adulthood the way men are today. Both agreed.

Although lots of men who grew up in the 1920’s through the mid 1940’s were athletic in their youth, it was mostly centered on fitness in preparation for competitive sports. After school years, many went off to war. When they returned they went about the business of finding jobs and starting families, and their days of fitness had pretty much ended when they last walked off the field or the court, or finished their military service. They had put in their time, played sports, fought for their country, and now they had other priorities with work and family. When it came to leisure time, they engaged in the great American male pastime of becoming sports spectators instead of participants.

Unlike today, they weren’t obsessed with youth and staying young. Adulthood, responsibility and the consequential separation from the things of youth was the zeitgeist. It’s rather ironic since it is so much harder to stay in shape as an adult.

Now things are in some ways reversed. As we, the sons of these men, enter middle age, we not only have those things our fathers’ lacked, including gyms, home equipment, and a ton of information about our health, we are confronted with the message that youthfulness is something we must cling to at almost any cost, and many of us heed the call. On television and in magazines, just about everywhere we look we get the message that staying in shape promises power, virility, and desirability. Some men of the baby boom generation who never even played sports in their youth now workout regularly and in some cases are in the best shape of their lives. Many don’t even play competitive sports; we do it for those other reasons and overall health.

Still, men learn slowly. At a time when more adult men possibly than ever before are doing more to take care of themselves, the attendant problems like obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, and impotency, not only still exist, some affect an astonishingly high number of men. We still generally die younger than women. Too many of us won’t see a doctor until there is something clearly wrong that we can’t ignore. Too few of us are open to physical, psychological and spirit-satisfying prac-tices that are outside of traditional male activities.

For example, I recently had a chance to speak with yoga guru Rodney Yee, and that interview is in this issue. Among the unexpected things I learned from him was that up until the last couple centuries, yoga was mainly something that men did, but today 80 percent of the participants are women! There are great benefits in yoga for men if only we would try it. These and other things, such as meditation and Tai Chi, aren’t meant to replace things like weight training, but the reality is they will enhance our abilities in those and virtually all activities and aspects of our lives. We live in a stressful society, and men can’t escape that or the resulting problems, everything from high blood pressure to depression.

There is a story in Paul Reps’ classic compilation Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. It is called Real Prosperity, and to paraphrase:

A wealthy man asks a Zen master to write something for the continued prosperity of his family to be treasured for generations. The Zen master writes, “Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.” Upon reading this the wealthy man becomes angry and feels what has been written is a joke and a mockery, to which the Zen master explains that this is the essence of prosperity, basically, would you want it to happen any other way, in any other order?

For many men of the baby boom generation, our fathers are gone. Many died far too young from things that we can now cure and more importantly, avoid. Our stoic fathers too often died because of the way that they lived. Generally ignoring their own bodies, psyches and needs, continuing unhealthy behaviors and avoiding the messages they might have heard had they been aware of them and open to listen.

So as we focus this issue on Men’s Health, in the month that we celebrate our fathers, perhaps the greatest gift we can give them, ourselves and our sons is the gift of consciousness. If we teach through example, by listening to our bodies, taking better care of them and being open to all the tools we have at our disposal, without fear of exploring them, perhaps we can enjoy the rewards of longer, healthier lives and leave this life in the natural order, knowing that our sons will do better than we and our grandsons better than they.