“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.

The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back.

Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to be meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either”

~ A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller

The most useful metaphor I’ve found for thinking about my life came from Donald Miller, and it was to think of my life as a story.

For most of us, that story gets written without us really thinking much about it. As if someone else is the author.

To be sure, things happen in the world and our lives that our outside of our control. But we have SO much more agency than we think over our lives.

We are the authors of our story.

Once we realize that, exciting things start to happen.

We start to write more compelling stories. Bigger stories. The kinds of stories we’d want to watch. The kind of stories other people admire and want to live themselves.

If you feel like your story sucks right now, that’s good. It means you see it. And it means you can change it.