On "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller

“Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo (2)”

This book was authentic, raw, and honest. It had the voice of “Catcher in the Rye”, and the feeling of talking to a close-friend. Miller’s message was enhanced by his conversational vocabulary and natural phrasing. The book wasn’t trying to impress me or embellish the details of his life - which I think made the message all the more compelling.

I hope to discuss some of the main takeaways and tidbits I found in this book. Before we do that, let me provide a few bullet points to contextualize the quotes and some of my thinking below :)

• Donald Miller (“Don”) is approached by two filmmakers (Steve and Ben) who want to turn his previous bestselling book into a movie

  • In order to make the story more compelling they need to “edit” parts of Don’s life to make it interesting for the viewing audience.
• While this happens, Don becomes more aware of the life he is living, focusing on making his real life into a more interesting story. Along the way, as he learns more about the art of storytelling, he sees how applicable these skills are to transform his every day life.

• We learn about more story-worthy moments from Don’s life

  • His bike ride across the US
  • Getting in shape to hike to Machu Picchu with a potential love interest
  • Reconnecting with his father who he hasn’t seen since early childhood

I don’t agree with all of Miller’s reasoning (especially some of his arguments relating to secular or theological underpinnings to our stories) - however these can easily be substituted with differing beliefs without compromising the essence of what Miller is getting at.

This book focuses on the stories we live by, drawing parallels between what makes a movie successful and what makes a life successful. The premise of the book is that we need to focus on living good, memorable stories if we want to live a good meaningful life. Miller makes the point that a life well lived is synonymous to a story well written through a series of short anecdotes from his life.

We are all characters in our own life story

Miller urges us to view ourselves as a character in our own personal story.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, but it’s obvious now that in creating the fictional Don, I was creating the person I wanted to be, the person worth telling stories about. It never occurred to me that I could re-create my own story, my real life story, but in an evolution I had moved toward a better me. I was creating someone I could live through, the person I’d be if I redrew the world, a character that was me but flesh and soul other. And flesh and soul better too. (29)

What do we want? Who do we want to become? What struggles must we overcome? These questions are critical for all authors while crafting novels and movies, Miller believes they should be critical to us too.

While this shift in thinking (viewing ourselves as characters in our own story) seems trivial and even foolish - It can lead to a pretty significant change in perspective.

Viewing ourselves as a character, can give us some perspective on our life as an outside observer. If our life were a story penned in the pages of a book or movie script would it be interesting? What would we think while reading a book about our life? Are we an interesting character?

I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants. (59)

Miller points out how many of us don’t want see ourselves as being “characters in a story” because this puts pressure on us to craft an arc to our life. It’s so much easier to become an “unwilling victim” and float aimlessly through life without intending to create a story. But doing this is certainly less fulfilling.

So I started obeying a little. I’d feel God wanting me to hold my tongue, and I would. It didn’t feel natural at first; it felt fake, like I was being a character somebody else wanted me to be and not who I actually was; but if I held my tongue, the scene would play better, and I always felt better when it was done. I started feeling like a better character, and when you are a better character, your story gets better too. (88)

Once we’re mindful about wanting to live and create better stories - there are small tweaks and modifications we can make to the hundreds of micro-interactions we engage with daily. Even something as simple as meeting someone for coffee, holding the door for a stranger, or waving a hello can be the catalyst toward creating a better story. With the seeking of a story as a heuristic for a life well lived, you no longer need to worry about nebulous goals like (“living well”), rather you can focus on the adventure. For “Don”, he decides to pursue three stories: reconnecting with his father, chasing a girl he liked, and biking across the US.

The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person’s story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don’t want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories. If it won’t work in a story, it won’t work in life. (124)

This really got me thinking. It’s ok to have “traditional” ambitions (the college degree, 9-5 job, picket fence, etc) but Miller is encouraging us to go one step further. What are things we want that have the potential to create deep, meaningful stories and memories? What’s something that you’ve always wanted to do, but never considered because it didn’t fit into the window of normality? Visit Antarctica and conduct Gentoo Penguin research? Spend a summer on an orchard? Busk in public on New Year’s eve? Do those things. You most likely aren’t going to find a great story pursuing your more traditional ambitions, but by sprinkling in stories like this, you can make your life far more memorable and interesting.

And I found myself wanting even better stories. And that’s the thing you’ll realize when you organize your life into the structure of story. You’ll get a taste for one story and then want another, and then another, and the stories will build until you’re living a kind of epic of risk and reward, and the whole thing will be molding you into the actual character whose roles you’ve been playing. And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can’t go back to being normal; you can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time. The more practice stories I lived, the more I wanted an epic to climb inside of and see through till its end. (154)

I love this quote so much. It’s an amazing framework for living life.

Stories have the propensity to snowball. You’ll start off just intending to bike with a few friends like Don in the book, and before you know it you’ll be on a very story-worthy adventure across the US.

Stories give us meaning. Stories make our life memorable. Let’s all seek better stories for ourselves.

But, stories are really just about changing your character

He got louder. “Writing a story isn’t about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn’t think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes a person.” His voice was like thunder now. “You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That’s the only way we change.”(182)

What Miller is getting at here is that in all good movies, we’re never really there for the plot, we’re there for the characters. More specifically, we’re there to see the main characters change. I wish that all one needed to undergo change was an hour lecture or online webinar about mindset, but sadly this is not the case. Change requires a journey, change requires a struggle, … change requires a story. We embark on these stories and live this life because it is the most effective way of completing our character arc, and becoming a better person.

You never see this in movies. Characters don’t look at themselves in the bathroom mirror for hours wondering why they can no longer feel. Characters in movies progress. But I didn’t know what direction to move. I was walking down Thirteenth Street and caught my reflection in the window of the Ugly Mug. I stood for an embarrassingly long time wondering how the lines around my eyes had suddenly grown so deep. (191)

Miller describes in the book a point in time after he had broken up with the girl he thought might be “the one,” when he felt completely dejected and empty. This wasn’t supposed to happen! After all, in a movie the main characters almost never feel like they’re stuck! They have a sense of direction, a sense of getting things done, but at this point in time Miller had none of that. I think what Miller is reminding us is that for all that this paradigm shift can bring (viewing ourselves as characters in a story), it is important to remember that there are differences in the build-up when comparing our life scripts and movie scripts. We shouldn’t expect our life scripts and stories to resolve themselves to fit the 2 hour movie timeframe - our true timeframe is on a much more macro scale. Miller makes the point that struggle in and of itself can make a great story :)

I’ve lived some good stories now, and those stories have improved the quality of my life. But I’ve also let go of the idea things will ever be made perfect, at least while I am walking around on this planet. I’ve let go of the idea that this life has a climax. I’m trying to be more Danish, I guess. And the thing is, it works. When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you’d be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you’d be surprised how much you like spending time with God. (206)

There are many parallels between Miller’s comments here and the practice of Stoicism. Miller describes the human tendency to desire perfection - how we romanticize this point of climax to be a point where “it will all make sense”. This will never happen.

There may never be a point where everything is resolved, all the past pain makes sense, or you feel you’ve become whole. And that’s ok.

Simply the act of lowering your expectations (of others, events, and resolutions) can help you enjoy them more. You enjoy things more when you let go of expectations. You’ll enjoy your religion more when you’re not asking for anything. You’ll enjoy a friend more when you let go of the need for reciprocity. You’ll enjoy life more when you stop trying to seek resolution or completeness to all your problems.

Closing Thoughts

I’d like to leave you with the following quote. View life as the creation of many stories, all woven together by a common thread of purpose. Make memories, and a story will follow. Be memorable.

After studying memorable scenes, I realized why it was Bob and his family jump into the inlet when people are leaving the lodge. It’s a memory. It’s a way that they, and also their guests, will never forget their visit. But it’s like I said before, about writers not really wanting to write. We have to force ourselves to create these scenes. We have to get up off the couch and turn the television off, we have to blow up the inner-tubes and head to the river. We have to write the poem and deliver it in person. We have to pull the car off the road and hike to the top of the hill. We have to put on our suits, we have to dance at weddings. We have to make altars. (214)

What stories do you want to create for yourself?