A Million Miles

We were able to bring Donald Miller in to speak at Central recently, and since then I've read his latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I've read all of his previous books, so I was eager to see how this one was unique.

The first thing that stood out to me about it is that Don has had a lot happen in his life since he last wrote. Sometimes, his writing can feel like he is trying to milk something and almost "overwrite" his life. This book felt like he had a lot of new insights, new stories, and a great new perspective. While I heard much of the material in his talk at Central, I nonetheless found this an easy read and well worth the time. Here are some of his ideas that stood out to me:

"The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either."

"Without story, experiences are just random."

"Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller."

"If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation."

"I've never walked out of a meaningless movie thinking all movies are meaningless. I only thought the movie I walked out on was meaningless. I wonder, then, if when people say life is meaningless, what they really mean is their lives are meaningless. I wonder if they've chosen to believe their whole existence is unremarkable, and are projecting their dreary life on the rest of us."