Life's Elliptical

After a long time an idea worthwhile writing about. Or let me say a revelation.
I am a fitness conscious in the making. I got introduced to the concept of Machine Cardio exercises here in the US. You just can't jog out in the open in winter time. The elliptical Precor machines here beautifully explained me the concept of life-quite unknowingly to them.
There are programs, monitors and goals to set. The goal here is something that you need to achieve. It may be calories to burn, heart rate to achieve or just time to spend. Any which way you want, it works. What is your goal is what you need to decide. I almost invariably pick the Max-Calories-to-Burn-in-least-amount-of-time goal. Groovy, aint it?
Now as I start to work my way towards it, I realize that there are lot of variable factors I need to take care of , to achive my goal/target. For eg. I need to maintain my heart rate below a certain level, or I need to pedal optimally so that the speed is not below the threshold or worst enough, is to see how much time I am taking. The moment I want everything to be perfect, its all jacked.
So amidst the event I realize that my heart rate is too high, so I lower my speed. My time suddenly shoots up and I am in jitters. First it said 27 min to finish and now its saying 32 min to finish. So I start pedalling faster and my heart rate again shoots up. So maintaining a balance is very important. Then I see that I can reduce the time or burn more calories by increasing the resistance on my pedals. So I reduce the speed and subsequently my heart rate drops, then I increase the resistance. So now, my time is evend out, with more calories burning. As soon as I get happy about it, my legs start hurting due to more resistance. Oh ! Oh! Whats going on? So again I reduce the resistance and come to my original self. And pedal and pedal, to reach the goal. At the end of burning 500 calories, it says "Goal Achieved." and gives a one line summary " Avg Heart rate 134. Max heart rate 151. 50:17 min in zone 106-151. " And I am elated, because, thats what I wished for.
So to cut a long story short- what did that ellipitical teach me today? Life's worthwhile setting a goal for. And working your way towards it. In it you' ll have variable factors like your friends, family, work. But when you know what you want to achieve, you'll need to juggle with all these. Sometimes you'll win on some, sometimes you'll loose on some. But the name of the game is to keep moving ahead. And the culmination, the summary should bring smile to your face. Because whatevere you did back there, was against the resistance, overcoming odds and getting hurt a little bit.