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 February, and February was a …

A Month of Accomplishment (about)

 

~ or ~

 

Forcing myself to finish something (about)

 

06
08

Sometimes it really is about the destination

Written by Nathan on June 8, 2009 at 9:38 pm from A Month of Serving.

The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.

- GK Chesteron

My sophomore year of college I took a job as a residence adviser. Before they’d let me loose in the dorm, offering guidance and boundaries to dozens of incoming freshmen, they ran me through a one-week crash course in advising. The instructor was a outgoing, fast-talking middle aged woman who seemed to find her greatest happiness in reducing complex challenges and concepts into pithy bumper stickers.

For the week’s training I winced my way through her constant barrage of clichés, all offered with the supposition that anyone who needed help would be well served by kitschy sayings. Amongst my least favorite was “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” On the surface I get where that’s coming from – don’t stop and smell the roses, after all. But at the same time, no matter how remarkable the journey if there’s a place I need to get and I don’t get there isn’t it possible the journey was in vain?

A few years after those training sessions I was touring in a band and finally pulled into a town after an especially grueling drive. En route to this show one band member contracted a terrible ear infection required a doctor detour and 15 hours later, our van’s bumper fall off in traffic while still attached to our trailer. It was a terrible (and fascinating) trip, but we endured in part by keeping firm focus on the show at the end of the drive. But when we showed up in the town it turned out that our booking agent fabricated this particular show to save face. There was no show. Suddenly the entire journey was radically recontextualized just because the destination changed.

My destination this month is serving my wife well. It’s really not about the journey; what I learn, habits I pick up, etc. It’s simply about finding a path to taking better care of her. I hope by to observe and engage in forms I can’t quite explain until I discover how really to serve Jenn. Along the way I’m over-thinking the process, sometimes excusing my frequently tepid progress. Though two journeys are in opposition, and offer likely different destination. But ultimately I’m realizing the need for firm orientation – a compass of sorts – so that this journey takes me where I need to go.

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