Your Life is not a Movie Script and You’re not Leonardo DiCaprio
Life happens in the cracks as much as in story arcs
We sat in a London pub, drinking ordinary beer.
My friend Ryan handed me a book he’d enjoyed. “This writer, Donald Miller made a movie of his memoirs,” Ryan said. “The scriptwriters edited Miller’s life into scenes. They focused on the dramatic events, the most meaningful stuff.”
“Sounds like what scriptwriters should do,” I said. As I flicked through the yellow paperback he’d handed over, part of me wondered why Miller hadn’t applied this principle when he’d written his memoir.
Ryan continued: “Miller got inspired. From that moment, he decided to live his life like it was a movie script.”
Following this epiphany, Donald Miller wrote a book about living life as a movie script — A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. This was the book Ryan wanted to share with me. It sounds inspiring, and it is. Hundreds of online reviewers have found the book life-changing.
The core idea is: Don’t wait around for stuff to happen to you — go make stuff happen. Live your life as if it’s a movie, and you’re playing the lead role. Be Leonardo DiCaprio. Be Nicole Kidman. Be Will Smith.
When you live your life as a story, you’ll create a life where every day is etched with meaning. Your life will be so full that you’ll travel a million miles in a thousand years — hence the title of Miller’s book.
But… Beware of Volvo guy
When you treat life as a movie, Miller contends this leads to a meaningful, inspired life. As a result, he’s scathing of everyday, mundane existence. Especially of people who drive boring cars, like Volvos.
Here’s how Miller explains it:
“If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen… Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.”
Miller’s book is a call to action: Don’t become Volvo guy!
Donald Miller is mostly right but also wrong
Miller’s vision of living life like you’re the star of a movie is inspiring. I also believe in understanding my life as a story. I love searching for clues as to life’s meaning.
But here’s where I differ from Miller: I believe living as Volvo guy is a valid and noble story for many people. Most of us spend most of the time living in the spaces between big events. We live our small stories, where sometimes, our greatest desire is to own a Volvo. And that’s okay.
My grandfather drove a Volvo. He didn’t own it for show. He kept a Volvo because it was reliable. Volvo cars are the safe option. They reduce the risk of accidents. They keep trauma at bay.
People like Volvos because they care about the smaller things in life. Spending time with loved ones. Feeling more relaxed on their commute home. Driving a Volvo helps these things happen. It keeps us safe and secure.
I don’t mean to make this a Volvo promotion. The point is, a life without big dramas is a life well-lived. Life, to me, is about learning to find meaning in the small things.
Lee Stringer, a writer who spent 12 years living on the streets of New York, puts it this way:
“We have very busy lives, we run past from here to there, and we don’t see much of the in-between. This ‘smell-the-roses’ thing. One of the advantages of having tumbled to the street was I began to see some of the in-between stuff. I began to notice things more.”
Life, day-to-day, isn’t about big drama — at least not most of the time. Day-to-day, it’s about seeing the everyday magic that’s all around you. Even when that means buying a Volvo.
Life’s dramas are big because they only happen once
Here’s the other side of trying to live life as a movie — you can’t manufacture big moments.
Movies are about life’s big moments. Births, deaths, weddings, funerals. I can’t think of a single movie without one of these elements. Love, new life, and the fear of death are the backdrop of every film.
In the real world, life’s big moments are meaningful because they’re irreversible. You can’t play them back over and over. They’re one and done, they leave a trail, they’re tattooed onto the fabric of the universe.
Life’s big moments are forever — they’re tattooed onto the fabric of the universe.
There’s no rewind button. There’s no time machine to make these moments happen again.
Most of life is mundane, ordinary. And it’s the backdrop of the mundane that gives contour and shape to the big events. The seemingly endless flat of the plains makes the mountains all the more majestic.
I want to be ordinary
Maybe I’m biased here because I’ve spent most of my life being an ordinary nobody. I’m selling the lifestyle I’ve already lived.
But the truth is, I’ve found it to be a good life, filled with love, happiness, sadness, and moments of small drama. I’m fortunate there have been few big, traumatic events in my life.
As far as I’m concerned, I like living with as little stress as possible..
I do see value in Miller’s approach — he’s right to understand life as a story. I see my life as a story. I’m a romantic at heart. I love to find meaning in the everyday. As Emily Wilcox says, “Daily life is our only life.”
Life is about enjoying the small stuff — the smell of summer rain, the cool air of winter’s night, the rustle of leaves in the fall.
Neeramitra Reddy puts it this way:
More often than not, it’s the simple “unexciting” or mundane things that afford us the most happiness.
The small stuff makes me happy
Life’s best moments happen in the cracks, in the little moments we hardly notice, that pass us by day-by-day.
I’m actually pretty happy with being ordinary. I like being real, anonymous, and mostly boring. I’ve learned that what makes me happy is usually the magic of everyday life. And that’s where many of the best stories show up.
I love this quote from Donald Miller:
“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.”
I wish you the blessing of getting a taste for meaning in life and learning to enjoy the small stuff — the simple, the ordinary, and the mundane. Here’s to big stories lived in little moments.