Why don't we just choose the rapids?

Occasionally, I enjoy grabbing a cup of coffee from my local Seattles Best and reading a book from my extensive collection of "books I bought or was given that I want to read but haven't set aside the time to do so". Recently the book of choice has been "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller. Great book, yet it isn't the point, or catalyst of this blog.

As I sat here reading my book and sipping my black coffee a group of three women and one man sat down at a table next to me and began a loud conversation. Now I'll be the first to admit that while I always attempt to be respectful of others privacy, I often find myself becoming an audience to the conversations around me. Today I am glad I did. From what I have gathered from the past two hours of their conversation and ten pages of my book, they are authors and trying to work on one of the ladies blog. She is an author that is finishing up a book and wants to become appealing to a younger audience to increase her distribution once the book is released. They have discussed, in detail, the types of font to use, the pictures they should put up, and what kinds of things she should talk about and post onto her blog.

I had drifted away from their conversation back into my book and became very intrigued by a story in which Donald Miller meets a man named Bob Goff, when the man that was with the writers at the other table loudly exclaimed, "You need to stop talking about who you are, and start talking about who your audience wants you to be!". There was a pause and one of the other women asked for some elaboration. I'm glad she asked because I know I was definitely wondering exactly what he meant by that statement. He then said one of the most profound things I've heard all day, "We keep pretending that if we allow an audience to get to know us that they'll want to buy our books, this is foolish. The truth is that we need to make they audience believe that we are intriguing and interesting and someone that they would like to spend time with, then they will want to buy our books, cause the truth is that the real us is kind of boring". As he finished this statement it struck me as an interesting thought, a profound thought, a thought that is applicable to many different areas of life ... a foolish thought in and of itself.

As I pondered it more thoroughly I wondered if this is how we live our lives, or at least if this is how we are taught to live our lives. I started to believe that we live in a world that is less concerned with being interesting and more concerned with appearing interesting. The things we wear, the music we listen to, the words we say ... are they really a true portrayal of the person we are, or of the person we believe others want us to be?

It's strange how relevant this is to me as I read this book which is about the stories we live, and while I could try and explain what that exactly means ... the truth is I would have to write a book about it once I finally figure it out. The point though, is that everyday when we wake up we are presented with several different roads to travel that day, and while many of them are roads to mediocracy and lazy lagoon living, there are a few full of adventure and rapids living. How often are we choosing the lazy lagoon all the while wanting people to believe we are choosing the rapids? And if that's the case, why don't we just choose the rapids?

The truth is, in the past I have allowed myself to read something about someone and believe that they are exciting and nice and intriguing only to later meet them and realize later that they are boring and kind of a jerk ( 12th birthday, David Copperfield ). And that isn't who I want to be, I mean I want to live an adventurous, exciting, intriguing life FOR ME, not because I want others to think those things of me. Cause in reality, what's the point of appearing interesting to others if you're not interesting and excited about your life yourself? I mean, do you want to live or do you want others to think that you are living?

If you've ever been to a water park you will know what the lazy lagoon is, it's the slow moving river that people plop their rafts in which travels in a circular route. I honestly have never heard an interesting story come from someone that floated around in the lazy lagoon. They usually are always exactly the same "Ummm, I started here and fell asleep and floated for a couple hours then I woke up and got out right where I started." Boring. At the same time I have never heard a boring story come from someone that just travelled down some rapids, and not only is the story of the journey interesting but they got somewhere. I really don't know what any of that has with what I've been saying, but all I know is that I want to wake up every morning and choose the rapids.