I was recently struck by this question while reading one of Donald Miller’s books: what if we run out of worthy conflicts?
Stay with me for a minute…Donald Miller wrote an incredibly successful book entitled Blue Like Jazz. After falling into a bit of a listless depression following his success, he was approached to make a movie about the book and his life. The screenwriters, and others, taught him about story and character arc, and one of his friends summed it up this way: a good story is one where a character who wants something overcomes conflict to get it.
We never run out of wants. Our desires run crazy all the time, and one of life’s biggest challenges is controlling lifestyle creep as we achieve success.
But what if we run out of conflicts to overcome on the way to getting what we want? What if it becomes too easy, or the gaps between what we want and where we are too small, that we lose that drive to fight for better and more?
If this energy is channeled toward poor choices and bad desires, then that’s probably fine. But if we lose the motivation to work hard to sustain and expand further on our success, that will eventually lead to our downfall.
Life can lull us into complacency quite frequently. After all, we’re designed for bursts of activity followed by long periods of rest (see our cavemen ancestors, and my previous posts). Perhaps the successful person’s biggest challenge is to keep finding challenges, to keep finding worthy adversaries and conflicts to overcome.
What we want may not be all that important, but if we don’t maintain the need to overcome something to get it, we might find ourselves a bit lost.
Want these blog posts delivered straight to your inbox each week? Click here to subscribe.
Follow us on social media at the links below.
