preparation – Surprised By Joy

Preparing to Have Fun

January 12, 2026January 12, 2026Posted in inspirationTagged adventure, climbing, enjoyment, goals, hiking, inspiration, motivation, preparation81 Comments

“It’s not the will to win that matters – everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” – Paul “Bear” Bryant

I wasn’t a particularly athletic or outdoorsy kid. It wasn’t until my late 20’s that the climbing bug bit me. I was driving my car to work. I came around a corner, saw Mt. Rainier dominating the skyline and thought, “I should climb that.” From there climbing became not only one of my passions but also in many ways my metaphor for tackling the challenges of life.

Summits, blisters, carrying a pack, one step at a time, working as a rope team, objective versus subjective dangers – all of it gave me such great perspective on life.

Give me a pebble in my shoe and I’ll turn it into an essay about self-care. I’ve failed to take the time to stop to get rid of something little before it gets big enough times to have a lot to say about that lesson.

All of this to say that I came to hiking and climbing mountains as an adult. So when I proposed to my kids in mid-December that we climb Tiger Mountain on New Years Day and they enthusiastically said they wanted to, I had to think carefully about how to make it a good experience for them.

Go ahead and groan now because here comes the point cloaked in a climbing story. The first time that I tried to climb Mt. Rainier, it hurt like hell. We made it to our base camp at 10,000 feet and then a storm came in. We couldn’t leave for our summit bid at midnight as planned because it was still snowing so at 6am, the lead guide came in and said, “Whoever wants to try for the top can go ahead and gear up. But we’ll have to go twice as fast as our normal pace to get this done in half the time.”

My friends and I made it 11,000 feet before dropping out. Only 3 out of the 24 climbers made it to the top that day.

And I learned that the better shape you are in, the more fun you’ll have climbing. There are two levels of readiness – the first is to get yourself up (and down) a mountain. The second is to train enough to climb the mountain AND have some more in the tank in case you need to do a little more. It’s more likely to be fun if you’ve trained to the second level.

This applies to other things as well. Like getting ready for a presentation. The first level accounts for doing the preparation of putting together the slide deck. The second is doing that, practicing the presentation out loud, preparing the Q&A, and doing it well enough in advance to have a cup of tea to calm the nerves before starting. I’ve done that both ways as well and the second one is way more fun.

Circling back to inviting my kids along for a hike up Tiger Mountain, I wanted them not only to be able to do it but also to have fun. That meant that we all had to do the work to train to that second level. Working out on the stairs in our home, going to the Capital Hill stairs to train, walking the trail at Discovery Park, doing a pre-NY day hike up Little Mt. Si – I tried to vary it and make it fun. We had some bad moments along with the good but ten-year-old Miss O and six-year-old Mr. D were pretty good sports about it all.

I told my friend, Bill, that we’d done the hike and he sent me the Bear Bryant quote for this post. It matches what I’ve experienced. There are a lot of things we can white knuckle and get through. Having fun doing it requires some preparation.

(featured photo is the kids and I on a training hike)

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Sliding Into the Holidays

December 21, 2022Posted in inspirationTagged family, holidays, preparation, relationships18 Comments

“You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds…What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can.” – Thomas More

There’s a scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where a stone wall is dropping to seal off the chamber and Indiana has to slide through the crack at the bottom to get out in the nick of time.

This is how I’m feeling about the holidays – I’m sliding into our Christmas plans feet first, barely making it. And it doesn’t help that Seattle got a couple of inches of snow yesterday so that nothing is happening reliably as we collectively panic through our weather conditions.

As a result, I’ve come up with some strategies for coping that I’ve written about in my Wise & Shine post: The Vortex of the Metaphorical and Messy Storm

Hoarding

May 26, 2021May 26, 2021Posted in meditationTagged confidence, disconnection, faith, hoarding, meditation, now, parenting, preparation, saving2 Comments

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.” – Erma Bombeck

Once I heard a riff that comedian Paula Poundstone did about buying fruit. She said she never risked it because it was so unpredictable. “What am I going to do, wake my kids up in the middle of the night because the cantaloupe is finally ripe?”

Cracks me up – probably because I resemble that story. I buy the fruit but then I like to just keep it on hand because then I can feel like I have an adequate supply of fresh fruit. Way too often I cut open the watermelon and realize that I “saved” it too long. Good grief! And it’s not just fruit I do it with. I’ll think of a great idea to write about, something that really represents something meaningful in my life — and then not write about it because I’m saving it. I know, dear reader, that you are asking “saving it for what?” Exactly, right! Who knows? With all due respect to proper planning and being prudent, sometimes my type of saving can be the enemy of now!

When I dig deep, I realize that I’m working towards some false sense of safety. If I have things on hand, whether they be fruit or ideas, then maybe, just maybe I can feel that I have enough, that I am enough. The flip side of this isn’t emptiness, it’s lack of faith. I want to have a great idea in my back pocket because just in case I’m called upon, I won’t be without something great to say.

I’ve cut open enough fruit past its prime to start understanding this basic truth of my life. If I’m ever called upon, it will be for an occasion for which I destined for. I’m not arguing the theology of predestination but just generally speaking about the paths that are lives take and while they seem like such a surprise to us, when looking back there is a crazy, logical narrative that can’t be an accident. So, if I’m called upon, I must have faith that what I’ve done leading up to that moment is all the preparation I need.

Often when I feel disconnected from life, it’s when I’m hoarding. I’m safely to the side, practicing for when life calls on me. And whenever I clue in and return to this moment, the one I’m starring in right now, I think of Paula Poundstone and then go get some fruit from the pantry and celebrate with the thunk of the knife announcing the moment at hand.