Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life

to accept challenges in order to transform into the person capable of getting what they want.

Meaning is the same. You accept your own agency. You move your locus of control from outside yourself to inside yourself. You go on intentional adventures, and you get to experience meaning. You have a goal, you overcome challenges, you put another page in the typewriter. You wake up each day and you push the plot forward. The more I lived intentio

I am writing my story and I alone have the responsibility to shape it into something meaningful.

What if the broken nature of life is a fact, but the idea we can also create something meaningful in the midst of that brokenness is an equal fact? None of this can be proven,

The idea that fate writes our story is a lie. We do not suffer fate. We partner with fate to write a story generated from our own God-given creativity and agency. And that story can be more

Pain, then, is often the teacher that transforms the hero into the guide. That is, if their attitude toward pain is accepting and redemptive.

John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel taught me the discipline and joy of writing. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway taught me how to pace a book. Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood taught me to make the writing visual. Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies taught

The journey, of course, changes them. Still, the hero must participate. They must decide to take the journey. Bilbo leaves the Shire. Ulysses sets sail. Romeo scales the wall into Juliet’s courtyard. At some point in a story, the characters divide, and it becomes obvious who will be the victim, who will be the hero, who will be the villain, and who

Viktor Frankl did not see himself as a victim, I had no excuse. None of us do. We can each reframe our story and structure our lives in such a way that we experience a deep and fulfilling sense of meaning.

If we are tired of life, what we’re really tired of is the story we are living inside of. And the great thing about being tired of our story is that stories can be edited. Stories can be fixed. Stories can go from dull to exciting, from rambling to focused, and from drudgery to read to exhilarating to live.