The Goal Is NOT The Story.

An old advertisement of Volvo which connected the brand to safety.

“Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo” - Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years.

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with wanting a Volvo.
At the time when I was growing up, their ads pitch the idea of safety. “I want to protect my family and myself just in case something happens when I am driving on the road. You know bad things happen everywhere, right?” seems to be the typical mindset of Volvo owners at the time.

No one knows Volvo’s personality since it was never marketed that way before. It is so different than other companies such as Lexus, BMW, Mercedes Benz, every sports car brands, or even Jeep. Wanting one doesn’t make you a weakling, or a lesser human being.

But if you really want to look back and realize “Oh, what an amazing story I have lived all my life”, then a “Volvo” is not what you need to aim for.

You can not achieve greatness without overcoming challenges and barriers.

Without risks and failures, we will not shape our characters and we can kiss greatness goodbye.

A child learns to walk the first time falls over and over again. The child cries in pain, shock, and partly frustration. Eventually the child manages to walk. Then creates a self-challenge to run.

At some point, the child understood that all he or she needs to do is to get up just one more time with every fall.
This is the wisdom of the story. The story is the change in the child’s face from the first fall to the n-th fall.

Greatness is not the story - how your character changes as you pursue it, is.

This is where stories for documentary films and life stories mimic each other. Good stories require the subject to overcome difficulties and keep rising up to the challenges, whether they succeed or not, does not matter. They just keep getting up. Again and again. That’s where the story becomes great.