A Review of and Selected Quotes from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years was authored by Donald Miller. It chronicles his life as he edits it for a movie. But this book is much more than just a story about writing a screenplay. This book shows us how we can make our lives into something special.
My goal with this review is not to give a comprehensive overview of the book. Rather, I hope to share some ideas from the book that were meaningful to me.
I’ll first say that there is a lot to love about this book. In fact, I have many quotes that I love from this book.
First off, I’ll start with a quote towards the beginning of the book. He says:
“When Steve, Dan, and I first started working together, I didn’t want Don to embrace conflict. I wanted an easy story. But nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That’s what makes a story good. If you think about the stories you like most, they probably have lots of conflict. There is probably death at stake, inner death or actual death, you know. These polar charges, these happy and sad things in life, are like colors God uses to draw the world.”
It truly is conflict that gives color to our lives. Chances are if we don’t have conflict in her life, were stagnant. I don’t want to be stagnant. And it seems the only way to keep from being stagnant is to have conflict. But we don’t like to introduce conflict or alive. In fact, Miller states:
“Here’s the truth about telling stories with your life. It’s going to sound like a great idea, and you are going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you’re not going to want to do it. It’s like that with writing books, it’s like that with life. People love to have a lived a great story, but few people like to work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.”
I often feel that I’m not willing to pay the cost for joy. It’s difficult to give up my comfort. It’s difficult to leave my comfort zone. Pain is not comfortable. But that’s the price.
And so living your life deliberately – living your life on purpose – requires something extra of yourself. But giving the something extra is addictive. Miller says,
“And that’s the thing you realize when you organize your life into the structure of story. You get a taste for one story and then another, and then another, and the stories will build until your 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 when you live a good story, you get a taste for 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 to its end.”
And the reward for living such a life. A good life. A life with risk and reward. To reward is living a life with meaning. Miller says,
“Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path To experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort.”
I highly recommend this book as a way to live your life better. Decide what you want. Look at we have to overcome to get it. And go get it. This is what makes a great life.