Donald Miller is the author of the hugely successful ‘Blue Like Jazz,’ a personal memoir that spent over 40 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. This success actually became a problem for Miller as it led him into a kind of funk he could not break free from. That is until he received a call from a company wanting to make a movie based on his bestseller, and in subsequent meetings with the screenwriters Miller came to a realisation that effectively shocked him out of this self-absorbed funk ... his life was almost terminally boring and as such was really not worth retelling.
The movie screenwriters tried to convince Miller to change aspects of the narrative because watching the story as it actually unfolded was boring enough, they blithely informed him, to cause paying customers to “stab each other in the necks with drinking straws.” This led Miller to conclude that our lives lack meaning if the story our lives are telling lacks meaning. He then began to ponder the questions that frame this book:
What if we are not truly living the story we were created for? And what if the defining characteristics of a gripping Hollywood movie - like overcoming adversity and conflict - also provide the basic elements of a meaningful life?
Grappling with these issues resulted in 'A Million Miles In A Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Own Life,' a book where Miller writes about story and about how if your life is a story, you should strive to make it a better one. But to do that you need first understand what supplies the power of a story - and this is where Miller’s book gains strength as it details his entertaining and humorous journey of learning about the very nature of stories, and how to apply them to real life.
The truth is the lessons gained from Miller’s screen-writing experience do have some wonderful applications to real life (A Character is What He Does, A Good Character Listens to His Writer, The Importance of an Inciting Incident, and others), and engaging with them does bring about significant life-changes for him. Miller stops watching the Tour de France and takes up cycling, he starts chasing the girls he was too shy to connect with before even though this leads to pain, and most touchingly, he seeks reconciliation with his estranged father. As he lives with the mantra of a good story always involving the defeat of obstacles, Miller seeks out some of his life’s rougher edges and starts to live there instead of avoiding them. This dramatically alters the black and white narrative of his life into something technicoloured and multi-hued, something far more meaningful and beautiful.
I could give a hundred reasons as to why I like ‘A Million Miles’ so much, but my favourite aspect is that Miller is just so darn appealing. He is easy to read and immensely likeable, yet at the same time he is profound and challenging. Miller is much like that comfortable old friend you enjoy long rambling chats over coffee with. You know the kind I mean - discussions that lighten your way forward and enlarge your perspective while comforting your soul. ‘A Million Miles’ is not a perfect book by any means being a little slow in parts, and a somewhat inconclusive and weak in others, but somehow the overall effort is deeply compelling and thought-provoking.
‘A Million Miles’ is highly, highly recommended. Don’t just buy a copy for yourself, but for friends and family members as well!