Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

dreams

Live a great story

I was thinking back recently to the time late last summer into early fall when we’d had a bit of a respite from rising COVID cases and people were making fall plans only to have the Delta variant arrive on the scene. On Twitter, especially, “my fall plans/delta variant” memes were shared widely.

This one was my favorite (you probably have to be a fan of “The Office” to LOL at it):

And this one’s for all of us old enough to remember:

This whole vibe was sort of how I was feeling about the start of 2022. I used to feel a lot of hope and positive expectation at the new year, but the last two years have made me wary of thinking things will get better or that my life will improve in noticeable ways just because the calendar flips over to a new year. I’m not saying I have no hope for these things but instead of demanding them of the new year, I’m sort of tilting my head at the new year with a look of curiosity.

Like, “What do you have for us now?”

It’s a potentially dangerous question, but I’m trying to be open to what comes next, whatever it is.

That’s not a happy-new-year-rah-rah-crush-your-goals kind of sentiment, but those have never really worked for me anyway. (Plus it’s February now. We’re solidly settled into the new year anyway, right?)

I’m honestly wanting to navigate the space between false optimism and gloom-and-doom. I want to acknowledge the reality of the circumstances in which we live while holding out hope that things can change.

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I recently read an author bio that listed a bunch of amazing things the person had done before becoming an author: “J.R. has been an international spy, a professional skydiver, a jazz musician and has climbed three mountains and sailed solo around the world.” This is not the actual bio, but it contained similar jobs or positions that a reader might think are exciting or important. Maybe the inclusion of them in the bio was meant to impress, or maybe it’s just the author being honest about what has happened in their life.

Reading it discouraged me a little bit. I wondered if any other writers reading the bio might think, “Is THAT what it takes to be an author?” It’s certainly the kind of life that gets attention, but what about those of us who don’t have that kind of life? Can we still be writers?

More generally, I wondered if anyone might question their own life experiences, thinking “interesting” lives are the only ones worth anything.

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My life is hardly what I would call exciting and I kind of like it that way. I’m a middle-aged white woman married to a middle-aged white man. We’re raising two kids (one a teenager, one a pre-teenager). My favorite pastime is reading a book in my pajamas. I like being at home because the world exhausts me. No one important knows my name. No one would look at my life and think “Wow! What an amazing life she’s lived.”

I don’t say any of this to elicit sympathy or words to the contrary. This is my life, and what it lacks in excitement it makes up for with stability, depth and meaning. (I hope. I don’t feel this way about my little life every day, but I think it is true overall.)

Does that mean it’s not important?

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I have the pleasure of being part of an online writing group through the health and fitness community My Peak Challenge (founded by Outlander actor Sam Heughan). In the last year, I have gotten more involved with the Peaker Writers, as our subgroup is called, and it’s been encouraging to my writing to talk about the projects I’m working on and support other writers in their endeavors.

This year, our group designed a T-shirt for members. The motto we chose to represent our community is “Live a Great Story.”

It’s a message I believe with all my heart–that we’re meant to live a great story with our lives.

What, though, I wonder does it mean to live a “great” story?

Do I have to accomplish a never-before-attempted challenge? Do I have to have an exciting career? Do I have to take an impressive trip? Do I need to found a charity that saves the world or fund a movement that effects some massive change? 

Are those the only ways to be “great”?

I’m pretty sure that’s not what our group meant when it chose this motto.

We’re a gracious, supportive, inspiring, encouraging group who celebrate every goal and challenge met or worked toward. (The entire My Peak Challenge community is this way. You don’t have to be an elite athlete or work out hard every day or run a marathon or lose 100 pounds in order to be encouraged and celebrated.) It’s one of my favorite things about the community: your goals are YOUR goals, no one else’s and you get to decide how and when and if you reach them but every step forward (or backward) is cheered and encouraged and full of support because we recognize that life is not a straight line and reaching your goals is not an onward and upward kind of journey. Sometimes it takes us in circles. Sometimes we have to go backward or pause or change course. That doesn’t mean we’ve failed.

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

But back to being “great.”

Can we live a great story in the midst of our everyday lives? Can our stories be great if they don’t measure up to some lofty idea of greatness?

I’d like to suggest that yes, they can.

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One of the fun things about my job as a teacher’s aide in a reading class is all the new knowledge I acquire. I’ve learned about interesting people and places and animals from these small books we read together with our students.

A month or so ago, we read a story about a British man named Alastair Humphreys who 10-ish years ago (these books are a little bit outdated) launched the idea of micro adventures. Humphreys has done some big adventures, too, but he had this idea that maybe you didn’t have to climb a mountain or run an ultra-marathon or travel around the world to have an adventure.

He says this on his website: “you do not need to fly to the other side of the planet to undertake an expedition. You do not need to be an elite athlete, expertly trained or rich to have an adventure.” That’s good news for most of us.

I wouldn’t consider myself an adventurous person but I do like to experience new things and see new places. I’m a curious person but also anxious about certain adventures. I love to travel, for example, but I have high anxiety about the whole process.

Humphreys says, “I believe that adventure is about stretching yourself: mentally, physically or culturally. It is about doing what you do not normally do, pushing yourself hard and doing it to the best of your ability. If that is true then adventure is all around us, at all times. Adventure is accessible to normal people, in normal places, in short segments of time and without having to spend much money. Adventure is only a state of mind.”

Adventure is accessible to us, in the places we already live. That’s an encouraging thought, especially in pandemic times when travel and adventure are more limited than in pre-pandemic times.

So, Humphreys came up with these micro adventures, the kinds of things you could do in a weekend or close to home. You can check out his website for more about these micro adventures. Some of them involve sleeping outside. Others are food-related. (He has a challenge about eating A-Z international cuisine that intrigues me.)

All of them are meant to be done close to home. This, too, could be a great adventure.

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The lure of fame in this insta-fame world is strong. We want to go viral or get noticed by someone famous or do something extraordinary. But most of us won’t. And even if we do, the fame will be fleeting. So much new content is generated every day that what was viral one day is old news the next. If that’s what we’re striving for because we believe it will lead to greatness, I think we’ll be disappointed. It’ll feel like sand slipping through our fingers.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

What if instead of chasing that kind of life, we look at the life we already have and redefine what it means to be “great”? Some of the greatest people to live through history are people most of us don’t even know. I’m no longer surprised when I hear about an inventor or activist or business owner from the past whose name isn’t well-known. There are so many stories and lives out there; not all of them can be known to everyone.

That doesn’t mean their stories and lives weren’t great.

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Live a great story. 

I’m still working out what this means for my life. I’m not seeking fortune or fame or notoriety. (That stuff terrifies me because I’m so very awkward and ordinary.) I’m not seeking to make some big-time lasting impression that people will still be talking about decades from now.

I just want to live wholly and fully in the moments I have in front of me. To me a “great” life is one where I’ve followed my convictions, stayed true to my heart, sown kindness to those who come into my life whether they deserve it or not, and loved well the people and places in my care. I will consider my life “great” if at the end of it, I can see where I changed and learned and grew and can’t imagine it being any other way.

To live a great story is to choose daily in the direction of what makes the world a better place. That’s probably going to be something different for you than it is for me, and that’s what makes it such a beautiful world. I can’t tell YOU how to live a great story; only you can decide that for your life. 

All I can say is that you don’t have to let someone else decide what greatness means. You get to define it.

So, what does living a great life look like for you?

Why We Climb the Mountain

New experiences cause me to have anxiety. Actually, I’m not even sure that’s entirely accurate. I’m pretty sure I always have anxiety, it’s just sometimes I’m more aware of it than others. New experiences make me feel the weight of anxiety more than familiar experiences.

The church we’ve been attending has been organizing summer hikes once a month from May to August. The kids and I went to the first one (when we were still strangers to the church) and missed the second one for my grandmother’s funeral. The third one was rapidly approaching and I was feeling a whole bunch of feelings: nervous, excited, anxious, stressed. The hike was scheduled for a trail I’d never been to in an area about 30 minutes from our house. When it comes to hiking, I’m not new, but most of my hiking I’ve done with Phil. I’m not sure I’ve ever done much of it just me and the kids.

This was my first point of anxiety. Phil is much more level-headed about outdoorsy stuff than I am. I’m usually okay once I get out there in the woods and nature because it feeds my soul to be among the trees, but it’s the getting there that almost paralyzes me. I worry about injuries and getting lost and peeing in the woods. I worry about where to park if the trailhead is busy. Phil, if he worries about any of these things, doesn’t show it. He is calm and collected and handles the unexpected in a way that grounds me. But Phil works on Saturdays and these hikes are on Saturdays, so I was on my own with the kids.

And speaking of kids, sometimes they gripe about going hiking. They ask about how far the hike is and how long we’ll be gone and if there will be bees. The night before this most recent hike, it rained hard and I warned them: it might be muddy, so plan for that. I am not a great motivator for getting people out of the house when I am weighed down my own anxiety, so I thought it was possible that I would just say “forget it” and we’d stay home.

To lessen the anxiety, I try to get as much information as possible. This hike was supposed to be moderate with a steep incline to the top, so I checked my hiking app and read the comments and reviews to see just how steep and incline-y this trail would be. Phil and I once underestimated the designation “very steep” on a hike not long after we’d moved to Pennsylvania. Illinois “steep” and Pennsylvania “steep” are two very different things.

I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but I did find two interesting comments:

“Eagle Rock is neat but not particularly scenic.”

“Was disappointed with the view from the top, as it was covered by trees.”

This reminded me of the one-star reviews of National Parks I saw while scrolling social media sometime ago.

And as we hiked the trail (yes, we made it to the meet-up and yes, we had a good time), I thought about that latter comment especially.

Is the view from the top the only reason we climb the mountain?

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For the second year in a row, I’ve participated in a fitness and nutrition community/program called My Peak Challenge. If you’re a fan of the Outlander TV show, My Peak Challenge was founded by Sam Heughan, and what attracted me to the community and program was the personal nature of the goals and the program. (Also part of the annual fee goes to charity, which is a win, even I don’t use the program at all.) Peakers, as participants are called, are encouraged to “Find Your Peak,” be it a physical goal or a non-physical goal. Sometimes the goal is learning a language or going back to school; sometimes it’s about losing weight or climbing a literal mountain. Sometimes it’s about acquiring a new skill or abandoning something that isn’t life-giving. There are as many challenges as there are Peakers (so, thousands) and it’s inspiring to see people reach their goals and find their peaks.

I consider myself a bit of a slacker when it comes to goal-setting. I don’t like to commit to goals because I’m afraid I won’t reach them. (On the other hand, if I never set goals, I’ll certainly never reach them!) I’m learning that the failure isn’t in not reaching the goal but in not setting the goal in the first place. Progress toward a goal is not wasted effort. There are things to be learned along the way.

This is me preaching to myself, by the way. I’m feeling this tension most deeply in my writing life right now. I am still a writer but I’m not doing as much writing as I think I should be doing, and my writing goals are not particularly ambitious or challenging. Writing is my mountain and sometimes I fear 1) that I won’t make it to the top and 2) that I won’t like the view once I get there.

So I’ll ask myself again: Is the view from the top the only reason we climb the mountain?

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The reviewers were right. The view from the top of this particular trail was not stunning or breathtaking. We could see a little bit of farmland through the trees but mostly the view was the trees right in front of us.

The view from the top of Eagle Rock

Did that mean the previous hour of hiking was worthless?

Far from it. On the way up our lungs expanded and our legs burned as we traveled up the incline. We talked with those who were on the journey with us (and some who were not; we helped direct a family on the right path that their oldest son, who was far ahead of them, had taken). We tripped and consoled and kept going. We raced ahead and we lagged behind. We stepped on every rock on the path. We stopped to catch our breath.

And on the way down, we talked like old friends. Some of the kids got far ahead of the grown-ups but they were having their own great time. The time passed as if it was no time at all and by the time we were at the bottom, no one was talking about how mediocre the view had been.

All we could do was bask in the togetherness as we gobbled our packed lunches while giving our legs a rest.

“That was so much fun,” my kids both said in the car on the way home.

The view, it would seem, was not the point of the hike.

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At the top of a mountain or rolling hill, the view might be amazing. It might take your breath away.

Or the clouds might hang low and block the view. Or the trees might be growing right where you’re supposed to be looking. 

Or maybe you don’t make it to the top and have to turn around before you even get there.

Maybe the top of the mountain is crowded and you can’t enjoy the view, even if you can see it. Maybe someone has graffitied the rock or left some trash. Maybe it’s not what you expected at all.

Maybe it’s beautiful.

Maybe it’s mundane.

But was the climb still worth it? 

(To quote a Miley Cyrus song, “Ain’t about how fast I get there, ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side, it’s the climb.”)

What if the climb is the whole point?

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On that Saturday hike, the talking, the being in nature, the exercise of our bodies was the point of the hike, not the view we would see from the top.

With my writing, maybe the end goal isn’t the point, exactly. Maybe it’s more important what happens along the way.

Maybe the view from the top is only one of the reasons we climb the mountain.

Maybe we climb the mountain to see if we can. 

Or prove that we can. 

Maybe we climb the mountain to restore our souls with the sights and sounds of nature. 

Maybe we climb the mountain because it makes for a good story. Or a picture for our Instagram. 

Maybe we climb the mountain to spend time with friends or family. 

Maybe we climb the mountain to strengthen our legs or our lungs.

Maybe we climb the mountain because it’s there to be climbed.

Maybe we climb the mountain because we can’t imagine not climbing it.

Because we have to. Or need to. Or just plain want to.

Even if we climb it just for the view from the top, we have to accept that we can’t stay there at the top. Eventually we have to come down. And maybe the view at the bottom isn’t the same as the view from the top.

But then again, neither are we the same.

The person who went up the mountain is not the same as the person who came down.

Maybe that’s the whole point of the climb.