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.

It's March, and March is a …

A Month of Accomplishment (about)

~ or ~

Forcing myself to finish something (about)

06
24

The sound of silence

Written by Nathan on June 24, 2009 at 10:58 am from A Month of Serving.

With the summer in full swing, my wife is privileged to spend all day with our kids. It’s awesome, but the (often substantial) challenge is how she can deal with kids who are always “on”. My son can be especially demanding, because he can string together words and sentences for a seemingly never-ending block of time. It’s adorable and tiring. Jenn gets very little break from the start of the day until its end, which would wear even on the best of us. Given Jenn is among the best of us, she’s still frequently worn by the nonstop noise.

I’ve been trying to help by taking the kids, and frequently praying with her that she’d find silence. Last night she picked me up to drive to Disney with our family and the kids were asleep. It seemed like a brief answer to that prayer. I got in the car, happy about it, and was about to launch into conversation until I realized I was about to perpetuate the problem.

Granted our conversation is different (and hopefully better) than what she gets with our kids, but she needed silence still and I had a unique chance to be the answer to my own prayers. So I joined in the silence with my sleeping children. For an hour we drove, quietly, and she found rest.

Now and again we briefly talked, but I kept my mouth mostly shut for the duration. More importantly, I managed to do something truly helpful to Jenn just by doing nothing.