What's the story we are writing for ourselves?

Let’s start with an idea that is not my own.

Fascinated by the prospect of apocalypse, Douglas Coupland, in his latest book Player One (2010), grapples with the big idea that the human story will end as the earth’s supply of oil begins to run out. 

That said, the story starts far more innocuously than that and is much more a book about the lives of four ordinary individuals who happen to converge in a Toronto airport hotel bar.

In short, each of these individuals is lost. 

There is the barman, recovering alcoholic Rick, and three customers: Luke, a pastor who has stolen $20,000 from his church; Rachel, a beautiful 17-year-old who seems like an automaton; and Karen, a 40-year-old divorcee meeting a man she contacted online.

Each of these individuals, it transpires, used to have a more meaningful story to tell, something to live for and something they believed in.  But somehow the thread of their lives has unraveled.  They have, each in their own way, literally 'lost the plot' of their lives and ended up in some third-rate, soul-less, airport hotel bar.

Standing back and reflecting on the challenge of modern human existence, Coupland himself sums it up:

“Our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events – a story – and when we can’t figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow.”

This is personally challenging stuff.

What’s the story that I am writing for myself?  Has the thread of meaning already started to unravel?  Do I even know how the pieces fit together these days?  Will I end up as another player in the airport hotel lounge?

Another author I’ve been reading recently, Donald Miller, tackles the same issue from a different angle.  In his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (2009), his introduction sums it up perfectly:

“If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers.  You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen.  The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back.  Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful.  The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

Two books and two similar ideas that I can’t begin to claim as my own.

However, it’s still January, so I’m guessing that there is still time to sign up on the resolutions list for 2011.  You see, I absolutely can't afford to be the guy who ends up in an airport hotel lounge or spends his life dreaming of owning a Volvo.  None of us can.  There is so much more life to be lived; so many more interesting stories to tell; so much more meaning to be uncovered.

I’m determined to write a future for myself that someone will want to remember.

What about you?