"Our Stories Are Being Stolen By The Easy Life"

Image by Gerhard Gellinger from Pixabay

This week, I’m sharing my favorite ideas from “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years”, an amazing book by Donald Miller. It’s a non-fiction book that speaks to how we should think of our lives as stories to be lived, making them more meaningful in terms of how we live it, and how we (and others) will remember ourselves as we grow older and, when we eventually leave. This is Day 1.

“I realized how much of our lives are spent trying to avoid conflict. Half the commercials on television are selling us something that will make our life easier. Part of me wonders if our stories aren’t being stolen by the easy life.”

I’ve talked about this before, but there really are no shortcuts.

We look for the easy way, the hack, the 3 step solution, but in actuality, they don’t exist. The truth of the matter is that there is work to be done. Smart work, to be sure, (versus work for its own sake) but work nevertheless.

Part of this is the need to commit of yourself and make the effort to realize what we want.

But the other part, equally as important, if not more so, is the fact that that work actually gives us our education. It teaches us through the ups and downs, the setbacks as well as the leaps forward. It gives us the stories that make our lives.

Shortcuts don’t give us any of these, because they don’t teach us (not really) how to achieve, how to live or the true essence of our work.

There are no stories to be had through shortcuts, so it follows that we will have no stories to be remembered by if we follow them.

In other words, by following these shortcuts, it’s really as if our stories are being stolen from us.

And we’re letting them.