Response to "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" Part 2

Prompt for 9-16

9/16: Miller “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” p 61-120

Select at least two of the following prompts to respond to. Please keep in mind that responses should be based on the concepts presented in the book, not just your personal definition of things like change, desire, and story.

After reading Chapter 8 (This is me, Ariel, and I think they meant to write "chapter 18", so that's what I'll go with because..well...Chapter 8 was in LAST week's reading. Typo!), tell me: what do you want? Based on Chapter 13, ambition defines all stories. What is your ambition, your pursuit?

After reading Chapter 12, reflect on change. You have changed since you came to JBU: this is inevitable, because you are adapting to new experiences, and are on a new journey. Reflect on yourself and describe how you have changed within the past month.

According to Miller, we can’t live without stories, and we all follow after some story or another. What is/are some stories that have shaped your journey?

You Are What You Eat (And You Aren't What You Don't)

If someone had asked me four months ago (graduation day) what I want out of life, I probably would have said, "A slow summer." You see, I knew at the beginning of my senior year that time was going to fly past. It seemed that all of high school had flown past to that point. Why should it slow down now? I was right. It was so fast. It was gone so quickly. Sure, there were tough times. Times when time seemed to drag. Those times are my stories that directed my journey, and sometimes altered it. Those stories lead up to what I pursue, my ambitions.

Like the time we had to do a group project where we wrote a screenplay about Jonathan, Saul's son and David's best friend. I don't like group projects. I don't like my grade, my success, being in someone else's hands. Especially when that person is a D+ student. But the deadline came and went. I didn't get the grade I had wanted and, I believed (and actually still believe) I could have earned had it been a solo project. But look! I didn't die! I even learned a valuable lesson: You are what you eat. So when I was forced to eat some humble pie, I gained some humility. Granted, it didn't taste great. It was dry and crumbly. But it taught me something I couldn't have learned about myself: sometimes other people have better ideas than I have. (I actually choked a little on that part. I survived by giving myself the Heimlich on a chair. Hey, I'm still learning the "depend on others and teach them to be dependable" thing.)

Or the other time when we prepared for almost four months for the spring Easter musical, and I played the part of the narrator and sang "Via Dolorosa" solo while Jesus (my youth pastor, who was amazing) struggled up the center aisle of the auditorium. I loved every bit of it. I loved the stage. I loved the HUGE spotlight that prevented me from getting nervous on stage because I couldn't see the crowd. I loved being good at it. Maybe that was why during the second chorus of my solo the second night, I pushed a little too hard on a high note and my voice squeaked. It was the most awful thing that could have happened to my pride. I again choked on some humble pie. But even with that, I look back on that as a highlight in my high school career. I treasure it, sometimes allowing the memories to soothe my heart.

It almost hurts to know that that was five months ago. It is hard to remember that time has moved quickly since then and it still hasn't slowed. I've been in college for three weeks. But I don't FEEL like I suppose a college student should feel. I'm not overwhelmed, a product of my desire for order and efficiency in my life. I just can't bring myself to lay something off so long that I know I will be forced to produce inferior work. (The argument could be made that that didn't stop me from procrastinating in high school, but my response that is simple: There is much more at stake now. I'm not eager to blow it. Besides, what is the 'new leaf' expression for, anyways?) I don't have an extremely active social life, but neither am I constantly bored. My dorm room is neither sloppy nor extremely neat. (My roommate and I are both lazy perfectionists: preferring order, but sometimes unwilling to put forth the effort.) But maybe that isn't mediocrity, but typicality. I suppose I don't know.

All of that background to say what I want, what I pursue: excellence in my own eyes and the eyes of others. I wish it was more spiritual, more correct. I know that I should pursue excellence in the eyes of God. The cliché, over- and oft-quoted, of "when you are beautiful in God's eyes, you will be beautiful in others', too" is neither biblical nor historical. The most beautiful people in God's eyes were hated, despised, and murdered by the world around them. "Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them". (Hebrews 11:35-38) But knowing what you should do is not enough motivation, as Miller points out, to complete a goal. A person needs a story, something else to spur them past themselves and on to something greater. So maybe my ambition is less an ambition and more a search, a search for an epic. A search for a great story to show and tell to an audience. I've been in places where I discovered some great stories: Cuenca, Ecuador; Colby, Kansas; John Brown University. But I'm still looking for that thing, that one epic that grabs my soul and story and rips it from my white-knuckled, dead-man's grip. So my eyes are wide and searching, desiring and terrified all at the same time. I guess the only thing left is to go buy that bicycle, to cross the point of no return. To quote Jack Sparrow, "You know that feeling you get when you look over a cliff and have an urge to jump? welll....I don't have it." I suppose all that remains to be discovered is whether I will square my shoulders and take that last step over the edge.