And pushing yourself to do hard things.

The picture above isn’t perfect. The day when it was taken wasn’t a perfect day. And yet, both were good enough, and sometimes that’s just what you need.

Malan’s Peak isn’t the tallest mountain in the Ogden valley. Far from it, actually, but it’s a goal that’s achievable. Friday was the second time my wife and I set out and reached the summit. I think it took us about seven hours up and back, to include a leisurely lunch, plenty of breaks, and a bonus trip beyond the peak to reach Malan’s Basin a ways further up the trail.

Some people run up and down this hike. Some even run the route several times in a single day.

We aren’t those people, and that’s okay.

Our day started out with me making sure I took my heart meds. My mind often tells me that my body can do more than it can. It gets me into trouble that way more often than I’d like, but this was our day and I wasn’t willing to allow anything I could control to get in the way.

Life can be hard at times. I think that’s something that probably resonates with many of us after the past few years. If my intuition is even close to being right, then I think we’ve got plenty of hardships ahead of us as well. And, you know, maybe we can’t change the world. Maybe we can’t stop government overspending and corporate greed. Maybe we can’t just throw up our hands and stop the war that seems to be coming, but you know what we can do?

As my wife has become accustomed to saying more and more as of late, we can choose our hard.

You see, I’m one of those people who tend to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. I see things and try to extrapolate how they can play out. I create scenarios and put pieces into place as we march ever forward. No one asked me to do this, and it doesn’t really help anyone, but I tend to do it all the same. It doesn’t help that many of these insights tend to be right. Or enough, anyway.

Carrying this weight is hard, but so is climbing a mountain. This last Friday, I chose the mountain instead.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post for a long time now. As you can probably tell, I haven’t managed to get it done. Why? Because using Cornerstone (a part of my WordPress theme) to format a post can be tedious. It looks nice, and it’s a very powerful tool, but it can be a bit much at times. When you’re already exhausted, tedium can be hard.

You know what else is hard? Feeling like a failure because you didn’t do the things you wanted to do. There’s been a lot of that in my life lately.

Today, like Friday when we climbed Malan’s, I am taking a stand. I am choosing my hard.

Instead of sitting in front of my PC and working on a blog post for over an hour, I’m taking a chance. I’m writing this on my phone with the WordPress app, without the fancy UI components and capabilities of Cornerstone.

Will the formatting end up looking like my other posts? Nope. Will anyone be upset about this change? Honestly… Probably not.

As I mentioned before, Friday wasn’t perfect. We were in the middle of a heat advisory and it was hot. Really hot. But you know what? We did okay.

Tara made us sandwiches for lunch and I filled our water packs with ice water. We saw beautiful sights and got to enjoy each other’s company for hours on end without being interrupted. We shared engaging conversations and celebrated our accomplishment together with laughter and smiles. We saw a few different deer along the way and ate lunch atop the peak surrounded by a murder of crows who decided to stop by to say hello.

We even got to watch a small passenger plane fly by, taking in the sights that could be found along the mountaintops. It was so close we probably could have hit it with a stone.

And today, just two days later, we’re both achy and sore… but this is a hard that I relish. We did it. We set out with a goal and we achieved what we hoped to achieve. We can do hard things. Whether it’s climbing a mountain or choosing to write a blog post that you’ve been meaning to write for ages…

We can choose our hard.

We don’t have to carry the weight of the world. It doesn’t make much of a difference anyway. Nothing is guaranteed and, just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, life tends to throw wrenches into the gears of the machine you’ve worked so hard to build.

The best any of us can do is to choose to live our lives in a way that brings us joy when we look back at the path we’ve traveled. In that regard, I’m glad I chose the mountain.

Whatever your mountain is, I hope you choose it. Life is hard, but as my wife says… you get to choose your hard. Take your time. Get some fresh air and a new perspective. Chip away at in manageable amounts, if you must. Before long, you might just find yourself looking down at the world you left behind.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, be sure to check out my next adventure Conquering Lewis Peak!