Creating a Meaningful Journey (& Remembering a Sports Milestone)

A run can be a journey, one where the future is imagined in powerful ways.

I’ve been a fan of NFL football for many years, and over those years it has given me much enjoyment and a lot of warm memories created through happenings at least tangentially related to the sport.

For example, there have been countless gatherings with family centered around a Green Bay Packers game. With our home team playing on television in the background—sometimes well, sometimes not—we share good food, a few drinks, maybe a few cheers or complaints about the team’s performance or decision making, and a lot of conversation and laughs. This is, in fact, why I look forward to the Packers making the playoffs. In those cold, post-holiday months, it provides one or two more chances for these family happenings to be planned and enjoyed.

And then there are the quieter watching sessions, the ones that maybe aren’t centered around a playoff run or even a meaningful game and are more just my Dad and me sitting in his living room by the fireplace and enjoying our Sunday ritual. Sometimes my mom is cooking and conversing in the background, sometimes my wife is there when she isn’t working, but me and Dad are the “regulars.” Rain or shine, win or lose, we are there in each other’s presence under the banner of watching football. This is a ritual that I cherish and probably one that many a son with an absentee father has daydreamed about often (it is not something I take for granted).

As a Packers fan specifically I have been blessed to have a team with many great players and one that is pretty much annually in the playoff conversation. A large part of this is the way our Wisconsin team is structured and run from the top-down like a small-town packing plant (which  is its namesake, by the way). We have no billionaire owner who is constantly making impetuous decisions mid-season. There is usually no irrational reliance and breaking the bank approach on splashy free-agent signings to “go-all-in” every other year (obviously the Micah Parsons trade was a departure from this, but usually we prefer a “draft and develop approach). In Green Bay there is little tolerance for prima-donna behavior that distracts from the team, and there is solid quarterback play, generation after generation, even if that means that our top-drafted quarterbacks sit on the bench and learn for a few years before starting on the field.

In the 90s and early 2000’s it was Brett Favre. Like many I was a huge fan of both his passionate play and goofy, down-home personality, and I even went so far as to stick with him throughout his retirement waffling, change to the hated Minnesota Vikings, and various scandals.

Speaking of meaningful family memories, another is attending the retirement of Brett Favre’s number upon his return to Green Bay after a few years of estrangement. It was a sweltering July day, and one of my younger brothers and I went with my dad to witness his #4 being unveiled in the Ring of Honor at Lambeau. Much like the Packers annual Family Night in late summer, it was a financially affordable way to get the true Lambeau experience (and witness history).

And after Favre came Aaron Rodgers—a bit nerdy, a bit cocky, a generational talent, and a future Hall of Famer who, like Favre, would eventually be replaced by a young draft pick who sat behind him for several years, Jordan Love. Also like Favre, Rodgers would one day be traded to the lowly Jets before moving on to other pastures.

Rodgers on the Jets is where I found my viewing experience one afternoon early last year. Before his move to the Steelers, many figured his second season with the Jets might be his ride into the sunset after a severely frustrating couple of years with the NFL’s most seemingly cursed franchise. The hopes for the Rodgers/Jets partnership began high in 2023, and I can still remember watching with my mom, dad, and wife as Rodgers trotted out onto Met Life field for his Jets debut carrying the American flag. The energy was electric, as the anticipation for this event had been building for many months. NFL fans were worked into a veritable lather, and in my house we couldn’t wait to see what Rodgers could do on a team that wasn’t the Packers.

And then four plays into the game he tore his Achilles. Wow!

Rodgers lay crumped on the field, and fans sat in the stands and on their couches in disbelief. It was truly unforgettable. As with the original September 11, many certainly remember where they were when they witnessed this event.

But despite the long injury rehab process, and despite the disappointing 2024-25 Jets campaign that had them missing the playoffs, again, FOX last had put the Jets and Dolphins as their game of the week late in the season. After all, Rodgers had 499 touchdowns and needed just one more to get into the 500 Club, an elite circle of only four other men (one of them being his Green Bay mentor/non-mentor Brett Favre).

In keeping with tradition, earlier in the day I’d watched most of a disappointing Packers/Bears game (a last second loss) with my mom and dad at their condo, and now I was on the treadmill at my local gym to begin the week with a run. Back when Rodgers was winning his Super Bowl with Green Bay in 2010 I had still been a cigarette smoker and someone who couldn’t do a mile run without stopping to catch his breath. Since then I’d worked hard to get back in shape, quitting smoking and various medications and becoming a fairly regular runner, at times going for runs of seven, eight, or more miles.

This particular Sunday run hadn’t been easy to get to—the holidays had brought both overindulgence and illness, as they will in Wisconsin—but I was doing it anyway. I began with 3.5 miles and then took a walking break before beginning some intervals.

As I ran on the treadmill that day I was keeping an eye on the Sunday NFL action and specifically on what was going on with Aaron Rodgers. The television in front of me was showing Sunday highlights on the NFL Network, and two TVs over to my right was the Jets/Dolphins game on Fox.

The game didn’t begin well for Rodgers. His first pass of the game was an interception, and after that there were several more disappointing and stalled drives that left a person wondering if he really had anything much left to offer the sport and us fans anymore.

But then the Jets began to drive, and on that drive Aaron Rodgers began to look crisp and alive and before long he had his team in the red zone.

As this momentum-building drive by the Jets was happening, I was in the midst of my own inspiring push. When I set out to do intervals on the treadmill, I’ll often “warm up” with a jog of anywhere between a mile to three and then do faster spurts of running for about 0.15 miles at a time. However, at some point I often end up putting on the song Nostlagia by Yanni and running my heart out for the duration (about 5 minutes) as well.

When I do this “Nostalgia run”—when I lose myself in the transcendent combination of soul-stirring music and soul-liberating sprinting—alchemy occurs. The mundane world around me begins to fade away as if I’m on a bullet train moving farther and farther away from boring reality. The cold and gray Wisconsin winter, the weight of an impending workweek, and the banal distractions around me in the gym melt into a pool above which my spirit rises. My breath becomes stronger, my heart grows in confidence, and the top of my head gets light and tingly. Remember when you were really excited about something as a kid? Those wonderful butterflies that were corporeal in their effect on your stomach and smile and enthusiasm? It’s something like that.

And as I ran harder that day, losing myself in the triumphant crescendos of Yanni and in the triumph of my own fitness accomplishment, Aaron Rodgers tossed a 5-yard TD strike to tight end Tyler Conklin for his 500^th touchdown.

History had been made!

Love him or hate him, Rodgers has been blessed with unique talents and carries a distinctive voice which he isn’t afraid to use. Love him or hate him, he has made a mark on the world.

Along those lines, whether you love the composer and artist Yanni or chide his brand of instrumental music and love to mock those who enjoy him occasionally, he has certainly made a mark on the world. By the way, if you are on the fence about Yanni, I encourage you to both read his book, Yanni In His Words, and watch his concert Live at the Acropolis; you just might become a fan.

So both Rodgers and Yanni have left an indelible imprint on the world, and I guess that is a goal of mine as well: to leave a mark on the world. To keep searching and searching until I discover all of the various talents that God has put inside of me. To find a way to use those talents to improve the lives of myself and others. To keep digging and digging until I can express my soul like Yanni does, in a way that allows myself and others to transcend material surroundings and burdensome anxieties. To find my voice in the way that Aaron Rodgers has found his. To leave some sort of legacy, but mostly to make my life’s journey meaningful and fulfilling. To know that there is a journey going on here, and not just a plodding series of mindless chores to be suffered through.

Isn’t that what we want, deep down? To be able to express ourselves in a meaningful way? To build a life journey that is adventurous and fulfilling? Let’s keep those higher aims in mind, all of us, and see where it leads.

So that is my memory of a sports milestone. Now, whenever I think of Aaron Rodgers throwing that 500^th TD pass, I will also think of the mystical marriage of music and running that was occurring within me at that moment. I will think of my own milestone—that of being able to run as I once was not able to—and I will hopefully be inspired with each and every recollection. Inspired to keep digging, inspired to keep running, inspired to keep writing. Inspired to build something special on my journey, one step at a time.