I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of

We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage.

A character is what he does.”

I’d started an epic story of my own. And life no longer felt meaningless. It felt stressful and terrifying, but it definitely didn’t feel meaningless.

I kept resisting my story. But you can only do that for so long. It’s true what Steven Pressfield says: there is a force resisting the beautiful things in the world, and too many of us are giving in. The world needs for us to have courage, Robert McKee says at the end of his book. The world needs for us to write something better.

In a way, I’d started a new story about trying to find a story, and so I didn’t need to escape my boring life anymore. I was a character who wanted something, and, well, that’s half the battle.

When Isla walked into the bar, I heard Ben say “inciting incident” under his breath. And it was true, because once she walked into the bar, Rick’s life changed and there was nothing he could do about it. His girl was back, and he never thought he’d see her again. The inciting incident had disrupted his comfortable life, and he would naturally seek

Frankl’s papers, written after surviving the camps, and even after losing his wife to the Nazis, indicated a philosophical conclusion that misery, though seemingly ridiculous, indicates life itself has the potential of meaning, and therefore pain itself must also have meaning. Contrary to Freud’s posit that man’s greatest pursuit is of pleasure,

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat