A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (Donald Miller)

After writing a best-selling memoir, two movie producers wanted to make a movie based off it. They began changing the meandering memoir of his into a structured narrative. The real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life in virtue of a “better story”. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years wholeheartedly yet wittingly details the journey and challenges for readers to reconsider what they strive for in life.

🌎 Impressions

My fight to death against existentialism reached its climax after I read this book. I was held against the corner of figuring out my purpose, my life’s meaning and how it ties to the bigger picture. After being completely divorced from reality, I realised that while I may never reach a satisfying answer all we can ever do is to ceaselessly strive in delightful and strange experiences whether in virtue of coming to its asymptote or living in the now.

Overall, a great book, especially when I read it (right before 2021 New Year’s).

🧩 Top 3 Quotes

1. 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.
2. Suffering, as absurd as it seemed, pointed to a greater story in which, if one would only construe himself as a character within, eh could find fulfilment in his tragic role, knowing the plot was heading toward redemption. Such an understanding would take immense humility and immeasurable faith, a perspective perhaps, achieved only in the context of near hopelessness.
3. A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy

🌳 How the Book Changed Me

• “If you think about it, an enormous amount of damage is created by the myth of utopia. There is an intrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had such-and-such a car or such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such job.” — as real life protagonists, we can only control what we do and say, what choices we make, what words we say. In order to make most of the human experience is to have lower expectations
• “Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve avoided having a clear ambition is because the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realise how much there is to lose. It’s always been this way.” — Ever since college started, I’ve been on a journey to figure out what I want to do. As I trot on an elephant from analysing business strategies (i.e. case competition), advocating for climate change (i.e. interning at Earth.Org), arguing for pornography (i.e. public speaking and debate) and building the next best thing, my only ambition, in so far, is to figure out what I want to do but even each tiny route to the latter feels like a slog. But:
• “It made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want.” — satisfying
• “I was living a story, a life designed and lived with intention. I was watching less television and enjoying being in better shape.” — life can be satisfying with internal acceptance, there’s hope
• “I’d started an epic story of my own. And life no longer felt meaningless. It felt stressful and terrifying, but it definitely didn’t feel meaningless.” — The book goes through the dull lows, climbing climax, and high tops of Miller’s life. He was brutally truthful which made the story so vulnerable and truly a good one. He placed himself as if he’s an Average Joe which made it assuring that although he has a nice condo, it’s still possible for us non-nice condo people to strive and having meaning in life too.
• “And on the first day we climbed more than ten thousand feet into the mountains, and we were in such pain it no longer mattered how old we were or what we thought was cool or whether we knew who was in what band.” — Knowing that our time is finite, we are already naked. Petty squabbles over political positions or personal opinions won’t matter.
• “Characters don’t look at themselves in the bathroom mirror for hours wondering why they can no longer feel. Characters in movies progress.” — Small decisions every day contribute to the grander epic. Go do that hour run in the gym you promised yourself, go respond to that email, you owe it to yourself and the story
• “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.” — 🤯 🤯 🤯

the book is not a weight loss journey but rather how caring about the story, having lower expectations and living intentionally can reap subset benefits (i.e. working out, writing consistently, etc)

📒 Summary + Notes

• 🌳 There is a lot of money and power to be had in convincing people we can create an Eden here on earth. Cults are formed when leaders make such absurd promises. Products are sold convincing people that they are missing out on the perfect life. And political groups tend to scare people by convincing them we are losing Eden, or inspire people by telling them we can rebuild what God has destroyed. We all get worked into a frenzy over things that will not happen until Jesus returns. The truth is, we can make things a little better or a little worse, but utopia doesn’t hang in the balance of our vote or of what products we buy.
• 🌎 If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.
• 💧 People love to have lived a great story, but few like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.
• 🗑 A general rule in creating stories is that characters don’t want to change. They must be forced to change.
• 👩🏻‍🏫 The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is “Do not fear.” It’s in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it … but fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.
• 📳 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.
• 🌈 Regardless of appearances, who is this person? At the heart of his humanity, what will we find? Is he loving or cruel? Generous or selfish? Strong or weak? Truthful or a liar? Courageous or cowardly? The only way to know the truth is to witness him make choices under pressure, to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire.
• 🌆 The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending an easier way.
• ⏰ 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.

Thanks for reading :) If you enjoyed this article, you might like the previous one.

This publication is a collection of my books on my desk lamp (hence, Desklamp Notes) where I compile it to include the summary, notes and highlights.

Thanks to Ali Abdaal — where I took the format of this article.