A better story
Estimated read time: 2 min & 17 secs
"I’ve never walked out of a meaningless movie thinking all movies are meaningless. I only thought the movie I walked out on was meaningless. I wonder, then, if when people say life is pointless, what they really mean is their lives are meaningless. I wonder if they’ve chosen to believe their whole existence is unremarkable, and are projecting their dreary life on the rest of us."
That was one of my favorite quotes from a book I read recently.
In the book, a small movie studio wanted to make a film about the author's life. But when they sat down to brainstorm what the movie was going to look like, the author realized that his life wasn't a really good story.
For a movie to be halfway decent, the main character needs to be going somewhere. And the author's life at the time wasn't really going anywhere.
This made the author go on a quest to turn his actual life into a better story.
In the book, the author said, “A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.”
It's a simple structure. But once you understand it, you realize you can use this structure to turn your own life into a better story.
Step 1 is you need to find something want.
Step 2 is to do the work and overcome obstacles to get that thing.
What you want doesn’t have to be grand. It could be mundane, but it has to be something you actually care about.
I once saw a whole movie about two guys trying to get to a fast-food restaurant for some hamburgers. It was a great movie, not because of what they wanted, but because of the conflicts they faced to eventually get the burgers.
What you want also has to be challenging but attainable. If it’s too easy, there’s no story. If it’s wayyy too hard, maybe there's a story, but you are less likely to get the thing you want.
Another thing to realize is that you can turn any bad situation into a good story, and you don't need a happy ending for the story to be meaningful.
A great example is the story about a kid named Zach Sobiech. He found out he had cancer at 14, and he only lived for four more years after that.
During that time, as his body weakened, what he wanted was:
1. Create more memories with people he loved and cared about.
2. Write a lot of songs for these people to remember him by.
The crazy thing was one of his songs became popular and was sung by many celebrities.
The other crazy thing was that he found a girlfriend during his last years, a girl who chose to date him knowing he had cancer.
And, Disney eventually made a movie about Zach.
To me, that’s inspiring. It makes me believe that if we look at our own lives and ask, How can I turn this into a better story? We probably can.
It doesn’t have to be the most amazing story — the keyword is better. And there’s almost always a way to make our story a little better.
That’s it for this post. Thanks for reading!
-George 🐙
"How can I turn this into a better story?"
I love that! It's so simple.
I enjoy reading and it put a smile on my face 😊