Book Review: A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
I don’t like writing about myself and Don said the same thing. When we had to write “About Us” page for this site, I had 30+ different versions. 12-14 of them being very similar, I just thought moving some sentences around makes it sound nicer. It was a long and rigorous project which our clients will only spend 45 seconds of their time on.
Writing about ourselves is hard. I can’t imagine being pushed to write about our lives and make it to a movie. Or, rewriting about our lives and make it to a movie. This book is about that. Don was living a “mundane life” (his words) before being approached by movie producers to make a movie out of his life. Every thing changes from there on. He tried to make his life more meaningful. He looked into his childhood, past relationships and other people’s lives. He chose his own storyline. He chose to do things that are (highly) stressful but add meanings to his life. He chose to do more things that take him out of his couch and get others to be involved in the process.
… all of us are living stories, and those stories teach other people to live stories. And what our stories are about matters, not just for us but for the world.
I am not making that up. There is something in Denmark’s culture that allows them to look at life realistically. They don’t expect products to fulfill them or relationships to end all their problems. in fact, in the final interview of the segment, Safer was sitting across from a Danish man and remarked to him that when Americans find out the happiest place on earth is Denmark, they are going to want to move there. Without missing a beat, the Danish man looked at Safer and said, “Well, honestly, they will probably let down.”
How interesting is this fact? When I started writing actively on this blog last year, I asked myself what this would be about. Obviously, our works. But other than that? We are blogging 2-3 times a week and we will not always have two weddings (and sessions) to share every week for fifty two weeks. We have then decided to share about our life and contentment. We don’t want readers to read and hate their lives because they didn’t own certain things that we had. But we want them to treasure the loved ones that they have and look at their lives with gratitude. We want people to know that life can be simple and enjoyable. There is this post that we wrote earlier this year and exactly pointed at contentment by choice.
Although Pinterest and Instagram are taking over our world in no time, it’s our choice on how to live and how to see our lives. It is still a constant challenge for us to look at our Instagram feeds, rejoice with the ones who just bought a house five times bigger than our place/been to the places that we have always wanted to go/owned ____ that we longed to have but knew it was not on priority list in the near future and blocked that comparison thoughts. It is hard but it’s our choice and it’s doable! Here is an excellent post written by one of my favourite bloggers and photographers on life B. P. (Before Pinterest). I love her witty comment on elaborate birthday parties and the truth that she is sharing!
I hope you enjoy this book review and would pick up one copy yourself this summer! Have a great start of the week!
It definitely looks very inspiring + such a good reviews on amazon. 🙂
Loved this! I want to blog 2-3 times per week as well and I know many have expressed an interest in our stories, the way we live our life. I like the idea of influencing others thru our stories. May need to check this book out, THANKS!
You are so inspiring Jenn. I love that you actually read! 😉
[…] the Lens | Fellow Photographers This book is such a delight! We picked it up because we read from this that Bob jumped into the lake with his whole family to bid Don and his friends a goodbye. […]
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