Romanticizing Life and Making Stories: Notes From A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I've always been interested in "romanticizing" my life, not just as a way to relax or practice self-care, but as a framework for living life. However, I don't fully understand what it entails. Googling it gives me actionable suggestions like "watch the sunset" or "make a nice breakfast," but I think I'm looking for a more general model for approaching life.

In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller proposes that the elements that make a story interesting and meaningful also make a life interesting and meaningful. As consumers of film, TV, and books, we understand that the character must overcome conflict in a good story. However, we are reluctant to embrace struggle and discomfort in our own lives. After reading Miller, I think an essential aspect of romanticizing life is living to create a good story.

Our life stories don't make sense

In a good story, the character's achievements have to take place in the context of conflict and struggle. Without the conflict, there is no story. Despite this, I often tell myself that my life would be so much better if only I had X or if only I were more Y. There is a part of me that wishes I could change, effortlessly, aspects of my character to move me forward in life. When facing conflict, I sometimes wish I could skip over it, but that doesn’t make for an interesting story.

Miller argues that we should use story as a guiding principle. To help overcome the inertia associated with facing conflict, we should allow the story to make decisions for us.

What makes for a better story? If we play the scene you are about to experience, which action will be more meaningful for the plot? This is a core concept of romanticization: making choices to advance the best story. Obviously, it's not practical to stop and consider the story before every decision in life. Instead, Miller suggests using fear as a cue. Fear is sometimes an indicator that we are avoiding what's best for the story, and the feeling of fear is often a sign that we aren’t living the most interesting story.

This framework can be a useful way to get out of the comfort zone, but I don't believe that making many individual decisions that are beneficial for the story will necessarily lead to a meaningful story on the whole. A story needs an overarching theme that can connect all of the character's struggles.

A plots and B plots

Another concept I took away is that achievements are subplots in life. If we live as if our entire life is one story, most accomplishments aren't significant to the broader plot. Moving from one goal to another, even if achieving them involves overcoming conflict, lacks a unifying theme. Miller argues that the wider plot should be a character transformation. A movie still has meaning if the character doesn't win in the end. The story in Braveheart has meaning because of what Mel Gibson's character went through and stood for, not necessarily what he achieved.

I think this is a good balance to the story framework. Individual moments and achievements feel good, but they shouldn't drive meaning in life. This philosophy is related to the idea of "journey before destination" or deriving enjoyment from the process rather than the result.

Progress, success, and ambition

Emphasizing the process is something that I've struggled with. For many of the things I do, I ask myself if I would continue even if I experienced no success. Honestly, outside of activities that don't have clearly defined success conditions like spending time with friends, there aren't many things I would continue if I knew I would have no success. I'm not sure how much of this is my desire for progress or my desire for recognition and visible success.

As Venkatesh Rao put it, there's wanting the thing, and then there's wanting to have done the thing, wanting to want the thing, and a half-dozen other less pure motivations. Despite this, I think desiring progress is natural and good. For activities with defined goals and success metrics, very few people would want to continue if they knew they would never make progress. Progress is a benchmark for change, and a lack of progress can also feel like (and indicate) a lack of transformation.

When contemplating all of this, I can't help but feel less ambitious and driven than my friends. I don't think I am necessarily less ambitious, but the things I want to achieve are less competitive and have more ambiguous metrics for success.

An episode of Not Overthinking discussed some of the problems associated with the concept of "ambition." People tend to view ambition as a virtue, but ambition is incredibly arbitrary. An example Taimur cited that has stuck with me is that we would probably say a kid who aspires to be a chess grandmaster is ambitious, but we might not feel the same way about a kid who wants to be a professional e-sports player.

The way we view ambition makes it easy to unintentionally pursue life stories. Ambition values B plots. It encourages us to move from one milestone to the next but doesn't emphasize the character arc that a good story requires.

When thinking about romanticizing life, a concept that I keep coming back to is the idea of living intentionally. To live not according to invisible life scripts, rather, to a story of your choosing. But make sure the story makes sense. Don't choose to pursue the Volvo because everyone else wants the Volvo—try something more personal.