Yesterday I started reading Donald Miller's book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, and last night I posted about how it made my brain explode. It has too much awesome to hold inside one Jeff brain. Don's brain must be much bigger than mine is. I posted about how compelled I am to find, start, and follow the threads in my life that are working together to weave a story.
Tonight I finished reading the book, and I am still just as excited and energized as I was yesterday. But, I also realize that I'm not going to feel this same thrill forever. There will be mornings that I wake up to feeling that the living a particular thread is more trouble than it's worth. There will be days that turn in which every meaningless distraction that alights upon my mind will have more allure than my own story. And there will likely be plot lines that turn out nothing at all like I'd hoped they would.
I am tempted to say, "There will be sober days." But instead I am convinced that those apathetic days are the ones in which real life, with all of its beauty and potential, is covered by a haze. In the sober days you can see that the work of life is worth the joy. The work of life creates the joy, like an author creates a story.
I will be turning 30 years old this June. For the last few months, my wife has been insisting that such a milestone deserved celebration, so I needed to think about what I would like to do. I thought about having a big party, but I couldn't really get a picture of it in my head that excited me. I thought about doing a smaller party with more intimate friends and family, and that seemed nice, but a part of me knew I needed something more remarkable.
So I listened to suggestions and even tried to have my own ideas (can be quite hard) and eventually I had a string of commercials running through my mind. One for an HDTV, one for a brewery themed adventure, one for a golfing getaway, and a range of ads for a variety of parties. While each commercial was making its pitch in my brain, I would attempt to grab onto its promises and finally make a decision. I would mutter out loud, "I think maybe I want to...", but by the time I got to voicing the thing, I knew it was all wrong.
My wonderful wife did not give up on me. Last weekend she continued to lob a variety of ideas at me, widening her focus, persisting in her insistence that it had to be something that I really wanted to do. One of her suggestions was a cruise. At first it slipped by without even being considered; it's just not the kind of thing I'm into. Cruises are kind of tacky, aren't they? But later, when the imaginary commercial reel started up again, there was a cruise advertisement in there, and I saw something. I saw my wife and I spending the next few months preparing for this cruise. We were excited, we were working out, trying to get in shape so we could get every drop of pleasure out of the experience. And then we were there, on the cruise, sharing an experience that was both silly and grand, and giggling together about it. In my commercial we were proud of each other for all of our preparation, and we were marking a milestone in my life with a memory that would last. I was sold. Sunday, just two days ago, we started shopping for cruises. I sent an email to my boss asking for the time off. As soon as he approved, we would book the trip.
My growing excitement was highly abnormal for me. Internally, I was wondering what all this fuss was about. And in reflection I was realizing that I had become a something of a stick in the mud. What's worse, though, is that I had somehow, without knowing, accepted that being a stick in the mud was just a part of who I am, now and forever. But that wasn't true. I didn't have to be a stick in the mud. I was acting different. Even others noticed. In order to go on the cruise, we'd need a baby sitter to watch our boys. So, in the afternoon I tried to casually bring up the idea about the cruise with my mom. I tried to use my typical, muted, boring manners, but my mom must know me too well, as she later told my wife that I seemed really excited. She was right. I was excited.
True to our plan, as soon as my vacation request was approved, we did it. We've booked a cruise to celebrate my 30th birthday, and I am absolutely giddy about that. I think it's going to be a great story.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Picking Up Threads
My job responsibilities require that on occasion I get on a plane and fly from Sacramento out to Nashville. The trip has become pretty routine over the past six months, and as I gathered my things and walked out the front door this morning into the pre-dawn darkness, I was prepared for today's experience to be completely unremarkable. My only real concern was whether or not I looked as fat as Kevin Smith. But now, as I reflect back over the day, I'm not sure I can wrap my head around exactly how significant this day may be in defining the way I approach the remainder of my life.
Indeed today was entirely remarkable, but not because of any special happenings in a physical sense. There were no achievements or explosions. Except when, not long after the stewardesses started explaining the safety features of the Boeing 737, and not long after I had opened and began Don Miller's latest book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, my mind blew up.
The book is an absolutely incredible work. The first few chapters read like a funny conversation with an enlightened friend. Don mixes humor and humble honesty into a concoction that had me working hard to suppress outbursts of laughter, while at the same time circumventing my usual layer of detached cynicism and drawing me into his narrative. The next few chapters started comparing and contrasting the tasks of living a life and telling a story. It was all resonating, reverberating, building. And then, all of the sudden, my head exploded all over my seat mates. I had reached a plot twist that extended right out of the pages of the book into my own psyche in some kind of Charlie Kaufman style feedback loop. I was Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction, realizing that I myself had inextricably become the subject of book.
I was also Mel Gibson in Signs, seeing a string of seemingly unrelated decisions, events, and details that suddenly fell into harmony producing a sense of meaning and fate. It even looks contrived; reverse engineered for literary impact. I mean, how else could this book, acquired by a stroke of unusual good luck, and then brought with me as reading material on a whim, so precisely provide a narration of my present day life? Could life itself be like that? Like a well structured and orchestrated story? With direction and momentum and plot threads that bear meaning and build and shape our characters?
Don, through magic, has convinced me that the answer is Yes. Furthermore, his book has illuminated several plot threads in my own story that are just begging to be picked up and followed to their ends. And as with any great story I'm compelled to stay engaged until it's all through with.
Indeed today was entirely remarkable, but not because of any special happenings in a physical sense. There were no achievements or explosions. Except when, not long after the stewardesses started explaining the safety features of the Boeing 737, and not long after I had opened and began Don Miller's latest book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, my mind blew up.
The book is an absolutely incredible work. The first few chapters read like a funny conversation with an enlightened friend. Don mixes humor and humble honesty into a concoction that had me working hard to suppress outbursts of laughter, while at the same time circumventing my usual layer of detached cynicism and drawing me into his narrative. The next few chapters started comparing and contrasting the tasks of living a life and telling a story. It was all resonating, reverberating, building. And then, all of the sudden, my head exploded all over my seat mates. I had reached a plot twist that extended right out of the pages of the book into my own psyche in some kind of Charlie Kaufman style feedback loop. I was Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction, realizing that I myself had inextricably become the subject of book.
I was also Mel Gibson in Signs, seeing a string of seemingly unrelated decisions, events, and details that suddenly fell into harmony producing a sense of meaning and fate. It even looks contrived; reverse engineered for literary impact. I mean, how else could this book, acquired by a stroke of unusual good luck, and then brought with me as reading material on a whim, so precisely provide a narration of my present day life? Could life itself be like that? Like a well structured and orchestrated story? With direction and momentum and plot threads that bear meaning and build and shape our characters?
Don, through magic, has convinced me that the answer is Yes. Furthermore, his book has illuminated several plot threads in my own story that are just begging to be picked up and followed to their ends. And as with any great story I'm compelled to stay engaged until it's all through with.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
