Prologue

Over the years, I’ve worked harder and harder to find meaning in life. But the more I've looked, the more I’ve wondered if I was going about my search the wrong way.

I've been looking for meaning through experience, but I think now that I've always had it backwards. Life will never be defined by extravagant experience, but about finding extravagance in common experience. So for 2009, I'm going to focus less on living large, and focus more on living well. Each month I'll start a new month-long project (like trying to run 3 miles faster than George Bush), to find uncommon results from common experience. Each project will involve daily activity, so every day of 2009 you can check my progress on the monthly projects and see what I discover.

None of these projects will cost much—in fact, I think most will be free. So if you're looking for a year uncommonly rich, you can join me. There's no membership required, just participate and comment if you want. Either way, get ready for a year I hope is unlike any other.

Epilogue

I stumbled across the finish line, but I manage to complete 8 of the month-long projects successfully. Blogging is now over at Wonderfam!

It's September, and September was a …

A Month of Accomplishment (about)

~ or ~

Forcing myself to finish something (about)

03
08

Watching my steps

Written by Nathan on March 8, 2009 at 5:07 pm from A Month of Wisdom.

Perhaps I’m behind on reflection, but Proverbs 4 ended with an interesting proverb:

Watch your step,
and the road will stretch out smooth before you.

I’ve done a great deal of driving over the past days, and I think I’ve found Solomon’s principle proven in my time on the road. When I was driving home from church today, there were a pair of bikers heading the same direction as me. The entirety of my 20 minutes drive they alternated between rapid acceleration and hard braking to avoid the traffic that was always hiding plainly in front of them. In contrast, I kept an even speed but paid great attention to the traffic pattern and managed to avoid braking most of the drive by intelligently merging when one lane was slowing down. At the end of the drive, I was a few car lengths ahead of both cars. My drive was smooth and worry free. By comparison, both bikers revealed time and time again their frustration at the traffic that they alone were experiencing.

It’s unlikely Solomon has traffic in mind when he wrote that, but even in this (probably weak) example I can’t help but find the value to wisdom even in the more trivial parts of life.

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