Man plans. God laughs.
This blog was written on New Year’s Day at 7 AM . . .
Fresh off an amazing 2024 where I ended the year with a day of climbing yesterday, my plan was to start today with a run – after all, 2025 is the year of the marathon. But even as I woke up rested this New Year’s Day, my body has other plans. I feel good, but I’m sore from a day of climbing. And I’m sore from a week of pushing my body through intense workouts. Sure, I could run if I really must, but as I think about what winning the day means right now, I know that not sticking to my plan is the answer. So, I will go swimming – a lower impact workout that’s better for my sore body and one I will write more about another time. Then I’ll follow it by recovering in the sauna and in an ice bath.
So, having just been caught in the moment of New Year’s and setting our goals for 2025, it’s now time to toss them out the window – if we haven’t already. I mean, seriously, when it is a challenge to even predict a day ahead, how can we possibly predict the year ahead? We can all probably look back to one year ago and see how impossible that is. As the old Yiddish adage goes, “Man Plans. God laughs.”
There’s only two ways to look at this. The first option is easy but brings little to no reward. It is to be disappointed that didn’t go as planned. It usually involves no plan B, but even plan B is, you know . . . a plan. Sure, the days that plans are accomplished bring success and happiness, but the days that don’t go as expected can feel like losses. To the extent there is a benefit from spending the day feeling regret, it hopefully comes from learning how to better deal with a plan gone awry in the future.
Therein lies the other option which is where all the reward is. Find beauty in the moment of unpredictability and go with it. Stay in the present and recognize the possibilities that it brings. If my day today is just about failing to go running – because after all, that was the plan and it’s not happening – it would be a day spent living in the past. But staying in the moment lets me tackle today knowing what my body needs and what it can handle.
Today is just a microcosm of what happens all year. As I look back to one year ago, I see that my greatest moments came not just from what was unplanned, but from what I could not have even imagined just 365 days ago.
Running: A year ago, the farthest I had run since returning to the activity in November 2023 was 2.2 miles. My purpose for running was simple. See how my body has changed compared to the last time I allowed myself to try it eight years ago and enjoy the freedom that those changes have brought. Who knew, maybe I’d get up to five miles or even complete a six-mile loop around Central Park? My prior running experience would not have allowed me to contemplate running a Marathon, but I did know that running was different than it had been before – as my pace was already three minutes faster per mile than it ever had been. But it was not until around May that my runs got up to five miles, and I knew that I still had more in the tank. Soon after, I signed up for a 12-mile run scheduled for August where my plan was simply to see how much of that I could handle, and promptly walk off the course if I felt at any point that my body wasn’t ready for it. If you read this blog, you know how that turned out.
Continuing to set PRs in November 2024.
Climbing: All I had hoped for one year ago was to give climbing one more try in 2025. Maybe even do it once a year, but really, I just needed to see whether the limit I set in 2023 – when I did just enough for a photo op – was all I could handle or whether I left something on the table. Was I really terrified by it, or could I trust it? After all, I had fun when I did it in 2023, so once more in 2024 seemed like a good idea. That would certainly be as adventurous as I’ve ever been in my life. Again, if you have been reading this blog, you know how that turned out.
Climbing outdoors on the last day of 2024. My ninth time out last year.
Work (and play): My job is perhaps the one area where I know not to make plans. My schedule throughout any year is entirely unpredictable, as I don’t know when or where I could be going to trial, and I cannot predict what new cases I‘ll be working on. Perhaps the most predicable thing about work is that it will predictably interfere with other plans. In 2023, I had tickets to three Pearl Jam concerts, but I missed them all because of trials or other work. So, I came up with a better plan for Pearl Jam’s tour in 2024 – get tickets to ten concerts! After all, with that many, maybe I’ll make it to two or three if I am lucky. Once again, if you follow this blog, you know how that turned out. Admittedly, outside of trial, going to all ten shows was the most exhausting part of my year. Traveling to four cities while working nearly all of those days – as well as working the two day of the New York shows – felt at times like God was actually laughing at the fact that I completed a plan I had no intention of completing.
Work and play are predictably among the most unpredictable parts of any year.
Legally Fit: I had not even conceived of this blog a year ago, and if someone had even suggested the idea to me on New Year’s Day 2024, I would have scoffed at it. First, I was just heading into my second trial in three months. Second, I was at a point in my fitness where great improvements were coming fast, and outside of my work obligations, I was singularly focused on going harder and harder for as long as that wave would last. Progress is not linear, and I had been waiting for that moment I would turn another corner. Those moments came early and often, and alas, when my trial ended in March, I had time to reflect on the fitness gains that happened – all amid a chaotic work schedule. The fact that others took notice and struck up many moving conversations early in the year helped me realize that I had something to share here – something I could not have appreciated just months earlier. In May, Legally Fit was launched, and it became the most important thing I did last year. Who knew?
The journey started in preparation for my 40th birthday golf trip in 2024. Looking back in preparation for my 50th birthday trip helped put it all in perspective and launch this blog.
So, what point am I making here? Don’t plan because it all goes to waste? Don’t aspire because the universe will certainly find a way to mess with it? Not at all. It’s just that the most beautiful things in life that seem to be those that were never part of the plan and perhaps could not have even been imagined.
That said, much of what I hope to do this year still involves a plan and requires it. I leave for a long-planned bucket list trip to Antarctica later this week. Even so, fresh in my mind is the fact that a close-friend’s trip only a year ago was derailed when his ship took a pounding on the Drake Passage and had to turn back after taking on water. Everything is fragile, and I can only do whatever I am supposed to do each day until I either make it there or I don’t.
I also can’t run a marathon without a plan. But I can’t run one either if everything between now and November 2 must go according to plan. I can only do it if I spend every day between now and Marathon Day living in the present – doing what I am supposed to be doing as life comes my way.
Just like Pearl Jam says . . .
You can spend your time alone redigesting past regrets
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who can forgive yourself
Makes much more sense to live in the present tense
With that, it’s time to go win the day!
Aaron
Blog note: This may be the last blog post for a few weeks. I don’t expect to blog until after I return from Antarctica and settle back into work and life. Check my Instagram or Facebook Page for updates throughout the trip. I’d say I plan to blog about it after I am back, but you know what can happen to a plan, so I dare not go there!