Anne Taylor Robertson Blog 8: A Million Miles

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is a book by Donald Miller, who wrote Blue Like Jazz a few years ago. I thought Blue Like Jazz was good, but there were elements of his writing style that I thought were pretentious and made him seem cocky. A few years after he wrote Blue Like Jazz, Miller had some life-altering experiences that led him to a more humbled identity, and on this he wrote a memoir. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is that story. The underlying theme in his book is the concept of story. Story is not just something that you tell or write, and it is not for entertainment. Story is a way of life, a method through which vivid, true life can be discovered and experienced. This relates to mythopoeia. Through bluntly revealing many of his most humbling experiences, Miller challenges his readers to create story for themselves. A Christian, Miller does not believe in destiny so much as he believes that God created each of us for abundant life. That life is truly lived when we step out onto the threshold and take risks that throw us into the fantastic, glorious unknown where change and transformation occur. I liked this book because I was reading it at a time when I was thinking about graduation (and still am), and wondering what to do next. There’s a desire for adventure that I don’t want to tame by working in an office. The stories in this book made me realize that those mundane parts of life are not bad, and they are not necessarily settling. Sure, adventure can be found through crazy things, but story can be created in all parts of life.