A Million Miles In A Thousand Years: Best Way to Spend $1.99 This Year
“Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.” (Miller 31)
Summary
In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller goes through a huge realization of the fact that his life is a big story and that he hasn’t done anything worth mentioning. Throughout the story, he is writing more towards this story and making it more interesting for him to live.
He starts of with a mention of his friend, Bob, who writes down all the memories he has. Bob remembers all of his life. Miller then mentions how he doesn’t know what to tell God when he asks what he did with his life and then compares himself to Bob by saying that ‘God and Bob will probably talk for days (Miller 3)’.
Miller’s life completely changes when two filmmakers, Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson, approach him to make a movie about his memoir Blue Like Jazz. When they start brainstorming, Miller realizes that Steve and Ben are making things up and that the story isn’t even about him anymore. So he decides to speak out and Steve says, “‘In a pure story,’ he said like a professor, “there is a purpose in ever scene, in every line of dialogue. A movie is going somewhere.’” Miller is first upset with what the filmmakers are saying about him but as he takes us through this book he starts to grasp the idea that maybe his life is boring and he begins doing things that make it more interesting.
Shortly after this, Miller loses his Uncle Art. This is an important part of his story because he understands how his Uncle lived a good story, helping out troubled kids. He mentions, “If you aren’t telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. (Miller 38)”
To help write a better movie, Miller goes to a seminar by Robert McKee with his friend Jordan. Miller takes two pages of notes but comes out of the seminar not knowing what a story actually is. He turns to his friend Jordan for help, who responds with “A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it (Miller 48)”. Miller splits this sentence into multiple parts and uses it as an outline for the rest of his book. Once the seminar was over and he returned home, he met with his friend Jason who was having trouble with his thirteen-year-old daughter. Miller not completely knowing what he’s talking about responds by saying that Jason’s daughter was living a terrible story. He went on to explain to Jason what the essence of the seminar was. Jason couldn’t stop thinking about this and realized that his daughter was just picking the best available story for her. He decided to make a story that would be better for his family. Jason ended up volunteering to build and orphanage with his daughter and wife.
One of Miller’s first attempts at editing his life and writing a better story starts with his father. When Steve and Ben start to write again, they suggest bringing in Miller’s father into the story. Miller’s is confused then against the idea of this because his father disappeared when he was young and now he didn’t have one. Even though Miller was upset by this, Steve and Ben decided to continue it. Miller basically ignored this and didn’t think too much of it until one day when he started to understand what God had in store for him. One day he understood that he had to go meet his father and when he did it wasn’t like anything he had hoped for. What he got from that experience is that he took a step that was really hard and it ended up paying off.
Miller also started to watch the Tour de France in his spare time and was so inspired that he went and bought a bike. He got a group of friends together to participate in the Portland Bridge Pedal. This is when he realized how once he started to live a good story, he couldn’t even imagine not doing something like this. He says, “And 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. (Miller 155)”. Right after this, one of his friends emailed him asking if he would be up to hike the Inca Trail in Peru. The Inca Trail is one of the hardest trails in the world and Miller began to question his choices. But after thinking about how good it felt to go on that biking adventure with his friends he assured himself that he would do it. All throughout the story, Miller goes through his obstacles with going on this trail but when he finally finishes it he quotes, “The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending an easier way. (Miller 143)”
Review
If you’re someone in need of some motivation or just a good read, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is a perfect book. It is a great example of starting over, no matter the age, and learning to embrace the world we live in.
There are many other great stories in this book, some hilarious, tragic, and inspirational. Reading Miller’s writing is like you’re actually talking to him, not reading a book because his style is extremely down-to-earth while also being very impactful. This book doesn’t just show you how to write a good story, it shows you how to live a better one.