Living A Better Story
Did you ever wish that you had audible soundtrack for everyday life when you were growing up? Me too, I still do in fact. Just the other day I found myself contemplating what it might take to have Christopher Walken actually narrate one of my more mundane days to make things a little more interesting. I think this strange want for a soundtrack (and a narrator) comes from my desire to live a life worth watching, worth reading about, actually worth living. I want my story to be larger than just little ole me.
I believe that it is important to live a life that actually contains a story worth telling and lately I have found myself contemplating how exactly that can be done. The top priorities in my life are without a doubt faith, family, love, and happiness. Knowing those priorities is the first step, but translating those priorities into my everyday life is where the challenge lies for me. I am discovering that those four priorities are the fuel which are capable of driving a life that contains a greater story. When I lose sight of one of my four priorities I have to make a change or pursue a new goal that will right the order of those priorities and bring them back to the forefront. For instance, in my professional life, if I find that I am consumed with working long hours with no time for family, friends, or life outside of being at the office I have to make a change. In fact, I find I need more than a change, I need reinvention, a new direction, a new ordering of my priorities. Sometimes that means having the courage to completely walk away from a career or a pursuit that is taking my life in the wrong direction.
Embracing change and confronting fear in order to live the priorities or values that you want to embody is part of living a life that contains a story. So far it has given me a life that in 33 years that has taken me from being a young soldier traveling the world and defending a nation, to living out my rock and roll dreams in the entertainment business and getting to experience moments on stage that I never thought that I would, to a life devoted to Christ, meeting my beautiful wife, and now standing at yet another fork in the road. What is next? A new career that allows me to live the life that I want to live? The adventure of fatherhood along with the joys of marriage?
I guess what I honestly want is to live a life that will outlive me. When I die, I hope that I will have affected enough people in the course of my life that my obituary will be more interesting than a list of clubs belonged to or hobbies that I had. I hope that there will be a story to tell, to learn from, to laugh about, to love. How to build that is something that I am still trying to figure out as I think a lot of us are.
What story do you want your life to tell? Whose story has affected your life? Shoot me an email at rememberedbygod@gmail.com and share it with me!
great post! thanks for pointing it my way. It seems you have several different and interesting stories that make up your life. The rocknroll one sounds cool!
[...] asked us to post a blog focusing on the importance of story in your life, which I did (read it here). I had a great time reading the variety of blog responses that people shared for this project. [...]
Thank You! « The Border Disciple said this on April 25, 2010 at 8:37 am |