A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

How do we approach life?  This is the fundamental question behind Donald Miller’s new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.  In this thoughtful and humble work, Miller goes back to his Blue Like Jazz roots and unfleshes the wonder and beauty of real life, not fanciful, fictional lives.  This is what true memoir should be: the literary quality of a novel grounded in the harsh and earthy realities of living.

Miller comes to a point in his life where he is going through the motions as a writer, pushing off a deadline, when he is suddenly contacted to collaborate on making Blue Like Jazz into a film.  As Miller goes through the whole process of creating a second Donald Miller for the big screen, one that has a plot and direction behind him, Miller realizes that his real life has no plot and no direction.  He’s kind of going through the motions, living without anything guiding his life.  He’s a person who gets paid to write stories but doesn’t have one of his own.

So, with that crucial realization, Miller chronicles the various events in his life from a kayaking trip, a run in with Bob the man who memorizes everything, riding a bike across America, attending a seminar on Story by an infamous teacher, and working on a movie about himself to show how he has gone on a journey to create a story out of his own life.

The purpose behind Blue Like Jazz was to get us to think.  The purpose behind A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is inspirational, but not in that corny "I climbed a mountain so can you!" sort of way.  Instead, this book is a spiritual formation of sorts.  Miller conveys parts of his life and his inadequacies in unflinching and sometimes embarassing honesty (to him? to us?).  Miller is transparent enough to call the reader to gaze upon their own life: will they find a story?  Are they living without a meaning?

Miller was after a purpose.  But he was not purpose-driven.  That’s about meeting goals.  Instead, Miller wants to live a story that he doesn’t know the ending to, and he’s okay with that.  We should be to, after we take a hard look at ourselves and begin to form our lives along the characteristics of story and not the patterns of this idle world.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Donald Miller
Thomas Nelson Publishing
$11.69 (Amazon)