Healings FAQ No. 20, Chris Gayomali
Healings FAQ No. 20, Chris Gayomali
"I have zero idea how heaven would work, but I like to think of it as something that functions just fine beyond the stretches of our limited imaginations."
I have a love/hate relationship with sports and suffer from imposter syndrome when it comes to whether or not I’m sufficiently devoted to fitness, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but first, two anecdotes. In sixth grade, my little league team went to the finals of the county championships. It was a big deal, and one I had little to do with, given my limited abilities. But we got there, and it was, I was told, a team effort. And so it’s the final inning of the final game, and we’re down by a run with a kid on second and two outs, and my worst nightmare comes true because it’s my turn to bat. I could draw this out, but you know how it ends: I struck out, ending our season. Today, as a baseball fan, I understand this sort of situation is part of the game. I was not so enlightened as an 11 year-old. I cried, was devastated for days, and have presented this as a formative story repeatedly to various shrinks as an adult.
The following year, my dad signed me up for one ill-fated “season” of Pop Warner football, hoping to expose me to something a little more manly than all the musical theater I was doing. A few weeks into pre-season practice, I developed pneumonia and a collapsed lung, and had to quit the team and go on a ventilator for a month. I never played a single game. At the practice where I turned in my uniform, the coach announced my departure to the team and called for a round of applause. The feeble cheers were punctuated by homophobic slurs. Ah, kids.
So yeah, I played sports growing up, but the results were mixed. And I don’t think I became an “athlete” until I discovered running later in high school. It was during a particularly stressful academic stretch, and I somehow got the idea that getting up at 6 a.m. and running three miles would help mitigate the anxiety I was feeling, and it did, and I’ve been running and hiking ever since. In my late twenties, I added cycling to the mix. Over the years, I’ve done some pretty physically demanding/stupid things: ran a marathon, rode a bike from SF to LA, and almost fell into a glacier trying to climb a very tall mountain.
But I mentioned the imposter syndrome: I dunno if any of this makes me an athlete, sans scare-quotes. For one thing, I hate gyms, and have never managed to devote myself to weightlifting, stretching, core strength, or any of the stuff that leads to higher performance and greater overall athletic longevity. I recognize the importance of all this stuff, but have a really hard time adopting it, and the generally depressing nature of fitness culture plays a role in that. I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that’s always talking about creatine, whatever that is.
All of which makes me the target audience for Chris Gayomali’s substack, Heavies. The newsletter first caught my eye when Chris introduced it (more on that below), citing his ambition to create “the health and wellness publication I’ve always wanted: conversational, winking, unshrouded in corny mysticism and Chicken Soup for the Soul meathead shit.” That sounded right up my alley. Since debuting in July, he’s already earned a Substack Featured Publication badge, and covered a range of topics, from his own personal nutrition regimen to the pros and cons of noise canceling headphones. A former GQ editor, Chris is the rare writer who actually makes me want to read about kettlebells, and maybe even use them some day.
As someone who thinks deeply about health, spirituality, and longevity—not to mention someone whose own medical scare inspired him to start a newsletter—Chris turned out to be the ideal guest for the Healings FAQ. Big thanks to Chris! And hope ya’ll enjoy.
What happens when we die?
I desperately want the idea of heaven to be real, not because I necessarily deserve absolution, but because an eternity in hell should be the bare minimum for some of the more heinous unrepentant actors here on Earth. (Mostly billionaires.) I have zero idea how heaven would work in concept—how old will my parents be? would it really be heaven if I’m dead and my wife and son aren’t there? is my dog here or is he in doggy heaven?—but I like to think of it as something that functions just fine beyond the stretches of our limited imaginations: perhaps our souls get absorbed into a giant miasmic goop with a singular shared consciousness, and the tradeoff is you get to learn who really built Stonehenge or if OJ did it.
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being terrified and 1 being it’s never crossed your mind, how afraid are you of dying? Explain.
I hum along most days at a four, but this can very quickly ratchet up to a ten in the middle of the night, mostly because I’m a dad to an unusually cool and open-hearted two-year old, and I would very much like to live long enough to witness the kind of person he grows into, surrounded by love and support and hopefully minimally-imparted trauma. So, I try not to walk too close to buildings with AC units dangling from the windows. Just thinking about my son and all the funny shit he does makes a vacuum form behind my eyeballs.
When I feel my mind veering into ten territory, there’s this Roger Ebert quote I think about often that helps chill me out, especially if I'm wrong about the concept of an afterlife: “I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.”
What’s the closest you’ve come to death? What did you learn, if anything?
The closest is something I wrote about in my introduction to HEAVIES, but TL;DR: I once spent a weekend thinking I had leukemia after a botched blood test during a routine checkup. The whole fiasco made me more appreciative of my body, and now I’m at a point where I try to not hasten its decay if I can help it.
Do you believe in God? Explain.
There was this one time in my 12th grade AP English class where the teacher, a funny British guy, was gently pressing some kids who were active in the Baptist church about their belief in God. How are you so sure you’re right?
“I don’t really care if I’m right,” said one girl. “I’m just scared of being wrong!”
I’m a Christian, which is a little weird to admit, even though a belief in a fundamental goodness, an inexplicable North Star that doesn’t exist anywhere else in nature and points the human heart towards a shockingly robust version of agreed-upon of morality, has informed a lot of my journalism and progressive beliefs. That’s mostly because I’m frighteningly aware of my own limitations and weaknesses. And maybe, uh, I’m also scared of being wrong. (I was raised Catholic.)
I often listen to the sermons of the late theologian and preacher Tim Keller, who I was lucky enough to catch in person over the years at Redeemer, the church he founded, in Manhattan. And—I’m totally going to butcher this—he’s made the case that there’s something beautiful in approaching life from a place of radical vulnerability, knowing that we are all fragile, constantly struggling against our most wicked impulses, which often win out. And yet! The gospel argues that, for all our ick and moral failures, we are fully deserving of His love and forgiveness. And with that understanding—that we are all weak AND loved in the infinite—comes a gratitude that obligates us to do the same for others. It shouldn't make sense!
Do you have a spiritual practice? If so, what is it? If not, why not?
I pray most nights before bed: for forgiveness, for the safety of my family, for friends in need of comfort. I try to give thanks (operative word "try"). It’s a vestige of my Catholic upbringing. A couple of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and whatnot.
Give me an example of a sacred text, for you personally—a work of some kind (book, album, song, painting) that’s essential to the formation of your spiritual worldview. Explain.
Oddly enough it’s Psalm 139, which right-wingers love to fallaciously cite in anti-abortion arguments. Verse 14. It goes back to the idea that everyone is worthy of love...
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works
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Healings is written by Garrett Kamps and edited by Tommy Craggs. Ayana H. Muwwakkil provides art direction.
Healings is about illness, recovery, spirituality, and related topics, and began in the summer of 2023 as a chronicle of Garrett’s battle with cancer. We make no guarantees that it will hold together, thematically speaking, now or ever.