Memorial day was a perfect day to do it too. So, I put a pair of ten pound weights in my plate carrier, donned my blue silkies and a green 3/3 India Company shirt. My look was complete and I got to work.
A Murph is a workout named after Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy, who was the first service member to receive the Medal of Honor for his service in Afghanistan. It was awarded posthumously as he died taking action that saved the life of his companions. The Murph is a workout that consists of a one-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 air-squats, all done while wearing body armor or a twenty pound vest. It’s now a memorial day tradition for veterans, active duty service members, and citizens of all types.
Initially I simply wanted to see if I could complete the challenge, but I quickly realized how important the action of tradition embodied — the action and not just the ideas — is to belief.
I don’t know if any traditional belief system is without some type of action or ritual. Recently I learned of the reasons behind why Muslims wash and pray throughout the day. The water on the body and even in the mouth cleanses the body while the prayer cleanses the mind. It is a way to wash off the non-pious from the body in preparation for refocusing on holy thoughts.
Similarly, many Christians take the eucharist, which is wine and a wafer that symbolizes the body and blood of Christ. It’s a reminder of the sacrifice made by both God and his son because of the belief they held in the potential of humanity to bring chaos into order through the spoken word.
Now, it can be easy for an increasingly secular society, who has decided that the way forward is to replace the sacred with the profane, to look at the washing, praying, and consuming of wafers and wine as silly habits. The water does not literally clean any soul and the wine is not literally blood. But what they are missing is the effect that going through the motions does.
No belief is ever manifest in reality without action.
As I ran, pushed, pulled and squatted then ran again, I found myself not only physically challenged. It was near impossible not to think of who Murph was, and why I was doing what I was doing. Why I pushed through the heavy breathing. I thought about the men who died during my deployments, both American and Afghani. I thought about why they were there and what it meant for them to voluntarily put themselves in that position in the first place.
My actions this morning paralleled my thoughts. Just as religious rituals engrain belief through action, so can simpler ones. Sometimes the action itself can come before the belief. We refer to that as “fake it ‘till you make it.” Sometimes those fake motivators end up being truly motivated beyond anyone else in your peer group.
I’ve decided that as long as I can hack it, this will be a Memorial Day tradition for me. But not only that, I’ll have to reassess how to make sure my beliefs are also manifest in action.