As of lately I have been considering a question that deals with making life great. The question itself is simply, "How do I make my life great?" Now there is a simple answer to this question and I think its a good answer but as a philosopher, of sorts, I'm looking for more than just the simple answer. The simple, and please don't take simple to mean unsophisticated at all, answer is to live a life for God. This answer is so full of wisdom its ridiculous but if you are like me you probably want some additional information... Something that gives you, for lack of better word, practical steps on how to make life great. Well, I've got four steps for you. These steps do not originate with me, in fact I am borrowing them from the work of Donald Miller. On his blog, and in his book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" Don talks about this concept of living a meaningful story/life and so using four aspects that make a good story Don applied them to life to make a meaningful life. The elements of a meaningful story/life:
1. A character.
2. That knows what they want.
3. And is willing to overcome conflict.
4. To get it.
I love this concept. After I read the book when it came out I tried to apply some of this to my own life and I did see that it made things more exciting but at the time I was unwilling to put proper effort into it to really make it go. As of lately since this question has been on my mind I've been thinking about this more and more and I've decided it is totally worth the work because I don't want to live a boring, meaningless life. So now that you have the steps I'm going to try and speak about each of them in this post. Keep in mind as you work through the next several parts of this post that this is just my opinion on how each of them goes. I would suggest you read the book and that you check Don's blog at over at www.donmilleris.com . Anyway here goes nothing!
1) A character.
This one seems pretty straight-forward to me. For a story/life to be meaningful there must be a character. The character is you when this is being applied to life. This one just seems self-explanatory to me so this is all that will be dedicated to this one.
2) That knows what they want.
A good story/life is driven by the plot. If you have ever watched an action movie you will know that the hero always knows what they want. They want to take down such and such bad guy or they want to stop the bomb from blowing up over New York. Now in real life maybe that could be what you want but my guess is that for most of us that is not the case. What we want is probably something more like "I want to get married" or "I want to get a college degree". We have to know what we want. Sometimes its simple and sometimes its complex.
3) And is willing to overcome conflict.
Conflict is what makes for great plots. If the story was simply, "Bob wants a carrot. Bob gets a carrot. Bob is happy." That is a terrible story. Now if the story involved that Bob had to race to the store against the odds of a helicopter chasing him all the while avoiding going any slower than 94mph so his car won't explode. Then we got something interesting. There is a conflict to be overcome for Bob to get what he wants.
Finally, 4) To get it.
After you overcome conflict you get what you are striving for (hopefully). This one, like the first, seems fairly self-explanatory.
So I didn't spend much time with those four elements as I believe they are all fairly obvious. If you are interested more in this again I would suggest checking out Don's book and his blog. Now before I close this post I have a couple of little things to say. First of all just let me say once again that I do not think that the "simple" answer of live life for God is wrong at all, I just long to have a few more steps than that usually something "practical". Second, I am not endorsing hedonism. I think we should seek exciting things in life but pleasure is far from the only good. I think God wants us to have fun He also wants us to have fun in a way which is different than getting smashed on booze. I am just now learning how to live a life which brings God glory through me having fun. For a long time I saw the world through the lens of woe is me thinking but as of lately God has been speaking to me and so I'm realizing that I need to slow down and enjoy myself and not worry so much about the "bad". I'm still not an optimist but I am certainly not going to settle for the same ol' pessimism I lived in for some long.
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