True Story

"...once you've lived a good story,....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."

I visited a Christian book store I used to work at the other day to touch base w/ a former co-worker & convey how sad/shocked I was to learn that the founder (a friend/my former boss) had passed away. Naturally, I was contemplating how I might (should!) be living differently in light of how brief & fragile life is - and that's when I happened upon this book. I bought it on a whim - thinking my son, an avid cyclist, might like it - but was surprised to learn that it was written more "for me"- and it's not so much a story as it is about story and how it parallels life. I underlined things that "rang true" or that I've found to be true, etc. & tho't to share some of them here.

".... humans are alive for the purpose of journey, ... He didn't know what the point of the journey was, but he did believe we were designed to search for and find something. And he wondered out loud if the point wasn't the search but the transformation the search creates."

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"If story is derived from real life, ... a condensed version of life, then life itself may be designed to change us, so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.

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"The point of a story is the character arch, the change."

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"...a character is what he does..."

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"The only way to know the truth is to witness him [a person/a character]

make choices under pressure..."

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"A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."

(ambition & sacrifice)

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"I wasn't living any kind of sacrifice, My entire life had been designed to make myself more comfortable..."

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"A general rule in creating stories is that characters don't want to change.

They must be forced to change."

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Whimsy - the nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special

if we were only willing to take a few risks.

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Perhaps what resonated most w/ me is the understanding that I am "the main character" in my story (as you are in yours) but my story (testimony) is only part of a much bigger story. To some degree, I have the ability to determine what I want to be like and the direction I want to go in  -one choice at a time - but in the end, the Truth is... it's not about me.

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going,
so how can we know the way?"
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:5-6