Thoughts on Our Best Laid Plans
Happy Belated Labor Day, Waywards reader.
Granted, we can acknowledge this past holiday as a somewhat sorry attempt to honor labor in the US, where International Workers’ Day, or May Day, in its modern form, first took shape. The movement for an eight-hour day without a reduction in pay expanded and intensified in the late 19th century, achieving and anticipating major milestones in US labor history, only to be all but forgotten. There’s no national holiday to commemorate the affair at Haymarket Square in Chicago in 1886, which led to the execution of four anti-capitalist labor organizers — the “Haymarket martyrs” — in November the following year. In lieu of federal recognition of May Day, a day of labor is set aside for annually in September.
“In 1894, President Grover Cleveland pushed Congress to establish the holiday as a way to de-escalate class tension following the Pullman Strike, during which as many as ninety workers were gunned down by thousands of US Marshals serving at the pleasure of railway tycoon George Pullman, one of the time’s most hated industrial barons,” Jonah Walters wrote in regards to Labor Day.
While the labor movement in the US managed to normalize an eight-hour workday with weekends off, to some degree and if only ephemerally, the employer-employee relationship of wage labor, as well as the lack of agency and subordination to owner and managerial decisions at work — not to mention the class stratification that comes along with all that — wouldn’t roll over so easily. Working people vied for greater institutional change than what was initially realized.
In light of this and recent events, I’ve been ruminating on my own dashed hopes and dreams.
In so doing, I was reminded of the old saying about the “the best laid plans of mice and men,” invoked whenever our often diligently contrived agendas, be they in the visionary forecasting phase or already partially realized through commitment and sacrifice, sadly go awry, our best efforts and grand ambitions be damned. Scottish poet Robert Burns helped popularize the proverbial phrase when he wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley.” Novelist John Steinbeck borrowed part of the phrase for the title of his 1937 novella, “Of Mice and Men,” a story truly appreciated by my mom, a one-time eighth-grade literature teacher who died unexpectedly last year.
The theme the book broaches is not unlike the one found in a famous Daniel Keyes story my mother taught her junior high school students — “Flowers for Algernon,” a tear-jerking tale of a man with a low IQ who, like the lab mouse named Algernon he befriends, undergoes a procedure that increases his cognitive power, only for both the man and the mouse to experience a precipitous intellectual decline after getting a brief taste of another way of life.
In Steinbeck’s story, a large but incredibly gentle and kind man with an intellectual disability, Lennie, along with his smart but poor friend, George, dream of owning fertile acres where they can, “live off the fatta the lan’,” as it were. Bad luck and a serious accident ensure events don’t go according to plan. Tragedy triumphs.
I thought about “Of Mice and Men” while on my exercise bike Sunday night. While cycling in place for two hours trying to release pent up frustration, getting some exercise in despite an inflamed Achilles tendon on one lower extremity and a sore plantar fascia on the other, I listened to a recent interview psychologist and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke did with podcast host Lex Fridman. Vervaeke, ever the sage, offered listeners apropos nuggets of wisdom as regards questions of “mortality” early on in the conversation.
“The universe doesn’t care about your personal narrative,” he said. “You can just have met the person [who] is going to be the love of your life; it’s the culmination of your whole project for happiness, and you step into the street, and a truck hits you, and you die. That’s mortality.”
That’s life. We’re always subject to fate in that way, Vervaeke added. Our “best laid plans” notwithstanding, I guess.
Vervaeke’s take on our fated mortality provoked my reflections on “Of Mice and Men,” as I pedaled. I started crying but kept cycling. Thinking about the book foregrounded, for me, the tragic nature of the human condition and got me thinking further about the way life sometimes seems to shit on a person at the worst possible time, occasionally piling dung upon dung, loss upon loss. Those thoughts brought me to tears for a moment. I snapped out of it, laughed a little, resumed listening and continued pedaling.
I opted for a long cycling session despite having a sensitive butt that always ends up feeling saddle sore anytime I get on the bike for more than a few minutes, which is why, if I’m not running, I’d use an elliptical trainer, save for the Achilles tendon and plantar fascia pain.
I also took to the bike over the weekend because life and failing health threw a wrench in the workout routine I had just established. I’d remained excited about the training up until those plans went the way of the Late Cretaceous period Panoplosaurus.
When I returned from my visit to see friends and family in Illinois this summer, my neck hurt. I’d slept on a cushioned chair at my sister’s place, one that inconveniently did not recline. The discomfort lasted long enough I saw a chiropractor about it here in Riverside several days after I returned from the trip. He took an x-ray during a complimentary visit. You can see it below and compare it to the “textbook normal” spine my chiropractor showed me.
I was told by a doctor years ago I had “military neck,” or a lack of proper curvature in my cervical spine. Since then, there’s evidently been degeneration and fusion of bone in the front, as I was informed at the chiropractor’s office and is visible in the x-ray.
The doctor called the condition of my neck and spine unacceptable for someone my age. In prudent fashion, he explained options and waxed persuasive. I purchased a package from the office, which in addition to chiropractic adjustments, time on a traction table and regular use of a posture pump for my neck, also included three platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections into my neck spread out over three months.
Cost-prohibitive as the package appeared, the announcement about partial student loan forgiveness and my subsequent realization I won’t have to pay back several thousand dollars I would otherwise have owed (despite teaching at public colleges and universities as an adjunct professor for five or six years) made the expense seem bearable and less likely to interfere with my plans to pay rent. Those are plans I desperately need to keep.
The verdict is probably still out on PRP. In an interview with podcast host Andrew Huberman, professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine, Peter Attia, MD, a public intellectual well-versed in the relevant medical literature, acknowledged there’s more evidence for the rehabilitative efficacy of PRP than for other novel and now-popular therapies (e.g. peptides, stem cells). He didn’t vouch for the reliability or effectiveness of plasma injections, however. Together with the other therapeutic modalities included in the chiropractic package, PRP has the potential to protect my neck, to stave off further degeneration and possibly even reverse some of the damage that’s been done. At least, that’s how one possible positive scenario could play out, my doctor explained, wishing for the best outcome in a way that had me optimistic and concerned enough I opted to buy in.
I received the first PRP shot on Friday, September 2. I only noticed stiffness for the next day or so, but I was instructed not to do any high-impact activity or any heavy lifting for two weeks. I assume I’ll receive the same instructions after the next two injections.
Unfortunately for me, I had only just embarked on a low-key progressive overload strength training protocol for my lower body. Not being the most muscular guy around, and knowing I had low bone density as far back as my early twenties, I figured it was time to get a little more deliberate about resistance training. Listening to Peter Attia discuss the importance of preserving muscle mass and strength as we age during one of his own podcast episodes offered further food for the kind of thought that can impel motivation. I don’t have much desire to live a long life at present, but I’d like to be healthy and fit enough to do the physical activities I currently enjoy doing for as long as I’m here — or, for at least as long as I can.
So I splurged early last month and bought two Bowflex SelectTech 1090 dumbbells, for a slightly cheaper price than is standard thanks to a seller on ebay. They’re adjustable and awesome. You can use a dial to change the weight of each dumbbell, anywhere from 10 to 90 pounds.
I designed an experimental program that would have me using the dumbbells to do lower body strength training twice per week, or once a week at minimum as dictated by a potentially hectic schedule. My plan was to do dumbbell squats at a heavy weight I knew I could do for reps without incredible difficulty and sans injurious soft tissue strain. I intended to increase the weight by five pounds every two weeks, or after three to four sessions, until I was lifting my body weight or slightly more.
On August 10, I started the program. It featured five sets of five repetitions with 50 pounds per dumbbell, intending to work up to lifting 60 pounds in each hand for 120 pounds total with decent form before late September.
My plan was to be dumbbell squatting about my body weight for about six weeks as I gradually and systematically eased into it without pissing off any joints or tendons or ligaments or muscles . I made it to the point where I was doing dumbbell squats with 110 pounds total for multiple reps and sets. In the video here, recorded so I could evaluate my form, you can stare in awe at my Herculean physique — kidding, as I’m admittedly thin and frail, boasting a small-but-protruding belly below my navel — and you can admire my subpar form as I bust out dumbbell squats holding either 50 or 55 pounds in each hand; I can’t remember exactly how much weight I was using then. As you’ll see, and at the slight risk of injury I suppose, I like to take the weight all the way to the floor to go through a full range of motion, which I’m inclined to think could confer enough benefits to the body to countermand the risk, in my case.
I can’t do that now, though. Given the PRP shot, I’m supposed to wait two weeks before lifting heavy again, I’m told. The restrictions are compounded by my aforementioned lower extremity issues, including the injured Achilles tendon in my right leg; it became aggravated again through inadvertent overuse. The recent aggravation lead to inflammation, which became excessive because I just had an autoimmune inflammatory condition flare-up, as I periodically do. Thanks to the autoimmune response, there’s greater inflammation around the tendon and upper heel. It’s visible and palpable, as you can sort of see in the photo below.
My best laid weight training plans proved no match for a disinterested universe unconcerned with whatever objectives I tried to spell out in detail and realize over time.
But the world hardly has it out for only me and me alone.
In early August, UConn Huskies star player Paige Bueckers, the spellbinding 5’11” guard who helped her team make it deep into the NCAA women’s tournament this past spring, tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee during a pick-up game. Bueckers put up 14 points and grabbed six boards in UConn’s loss to South Carolina in the championship game. She scored 27 points two games prior in a win over NC State that ensured the Huskies a trip to the Final Four. She’ll now miss the upcoming season due to the injury.
What is more, the second pick in this summer’s NBA draft, Chet Holmgren, a 7-foot forward/center unicorn with ball handling abilities that would make many elite point guards jealous, suffered a lisfranc injury to his right foot late last month while defending LeBron James in a Crawsover Pro-Am game in Seattle. He’ll miss his entire rookie season with the Oklahoma City Thunder as a result of the fluke accident.
Bueckers and Holmgren had hoped to hoop in these coming months, and I along with throngs of other basketball fans eagerly anticipated watching both of them blossom on the hardwood, but “the best laid plans,” as they say, too often go astray. When it happens, it’s frustrating, and it feels unfair.
“It’s been tough,” Bueckers told SNY. “The first couple weeks were tough, just trying to process it, and it didn’t feel like real life. There was some anxiety, some stress, and a lot of things that [were] going on.”
After Bueckers had surgery, her outlook brightened, understanding that every day she’s closer to playing basketball again.
“Times like these challenge you,” she added in the interview, “mentally, physically —just because, like, I love the game so much. It just sort of makes you mature in a way that you didn’t think you would have to.”
Hardly lacking in maturity even before the ACL tear, Bueckers believes what happens does so for a reason, and she’s focused on staying positive and keeping perspective, with the help of teammates who treat her like family.
Sulking doesn’t seem appropriate, given all that she’s grateful for, Bueckers said when speaking with SNY, adding that everyone is on their own journey. Hers, heroic as it’s been so far, has the potential to take archetypal shape — eat your heart out, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell — assisting others like she’s done with no-look passes on fast breaks so many times before by displaying genuine, uplifting courage in the face of adversity.
As much as we can and arguably should develop plans to make our respective journeys as meaningful and enriching for ourselves and others along the way, it helps to put them in perspective, to remind ourselves about, and steel ourselves in light of , life’s propensity to dump on those plans at surprisingly inopportune times.
While Bueckers begins her post-surgery rehab, I’ve been trying to adapt to my reduced and restricted physical capacities as of late.
Earlier today, I watched a video of Bueckers demonstrating stationary dribbling drills designed to improve handles. As evident from the video and any number of highlight reels you can pull up online, she has the rock on lock; ball handing is hardly a weak point in her game.
I realized that, despite my inflamed Achilles, I can perform those stationary drills for fun when taking breaks from work and chores. They don’t require much of a warm-up, making them a relatively quick active break I can enjoy periodically throughout the day if or as desired. Despite the 110 degree heat in Riverside on Monday afternoon, I recorded myself working on (what ought to be) seamless crossovers in front of the body and behind-the-back. You can check out the video here of me doing the drill absurdly slow so as no to mess up the demonstration.
To improve, you typically want to push your existing abilities and dribble fast enough you inevitably lose control, but I find it helpful to start out at a medium-slow pace to establish rhythm and gain a feel for the ball before speeding up.
Were I 100 percent fit and healthy without any nagging injuries and minus required post-PRP recovery time, I’m not sure I would’ve discovered that I can take short dribbling drill breaks outdoors like that. Were I injury free and not managing chronic inflammation that annoyingly flares up from time to time, I might not reflect upon and readjust plans put in motion or be encouraged to treat obstacles encountered as problems to troubleshoot and springboards for improved plans and ongoing stories.
Even as our plans ineluctably implode, we can modify, rework and replace them. We can appreciate our human capacity to endure and our ability to adapt while fine-tuning our faculties for flexible, agile responses to changing conditions. Taking setbacks and tragedies in stride, we support each other as we all keep pursuing our aims with zeal, without becoming so overzealous with our ambitions that we fail to realize it’s when those “best laid plans” get thrown off course that the real journey begins and better plans are afforded opportunity to unfold.