Story-Worthy?

"Life is about experiencing all the things

you find interesting and fascinating.

Just get out there and experience as much as

you can. Participate in life."

- Louie Zamperini

I love this quote for many reasons:

1.)   It comes from someone who has experienced life and can attest to this ‘philosophy of living’

2.)   It embodies an active approach to life

3.)   It excites me!

4.)   I found it in Runner’s Magazine (okay, maybe not quite as deep as the other three, but I think it’s significant…)

I was having a conversation with a friend last week about grandparents and the crazy stories that they tell. She had a collection of her grandfather’s most famous sayings that her family had pooled together after he passed away and had used them in an art project. With each quote came a story and with each story came an even better story- running down abandoned railroad tracks, spending an entire day lounging at ‘the lake’ with friends, hitchhiking across the country, dancing with the girl of his dreams in a jazz joint somewhere in downtown Detroit, and the list goes on. That conversation, compounded with epic adventures portrayed in TV, film, and print, has spurred in me this desire to do something fun and daring. Not something careless just something out of my comfort zone or maybe just something novel- adventures that I will look forward to telling my kids about someday; adventures that just might end up in my grandchild’s art project 60 years from now…

The author of the above-mentioned quote: Louie Zamperini was an outstanding runner. “He set a US high school mile record that stood for 19 years and an NCAA mile record that lasted for 20. As a teenager in 1936, he placed 8^th in the Olympic 5K. By 1940, he was an Olympic 1500-meter favorite, the man many predicted would be the first to break the four-minute mile. But the Olympics were cancelled due to WWII. Zamperini became an airman and crashed into the Pacific on May 27, 1943. He was then captured by the Japanese. They beat him, starved him, conducted medical experiments on him, and would soon enslave him. Once they found out he was an Olympian, they forced him to race. Hoping to humiliate him, the guards summoned a Japanese runner to face him. Zamperini had no choice but to run; had he refused, every captive would’ve been beaten. Running on legs so slender his skin hung loose around them, Zamperini soon fell behind. But as he ran, other captives began gathering to watch. They were exhausted and sometimes broken men, victims of relentless torture, but as they watched the runners, the hollowness left their eyes. Zamperini saw it in their faces: They needed him to win. A prisoner’s slightest infraction could get him beaten to death, so Zamperini knew he could die for winning. But on his final lap, the captives began cheering him on. He made his choice. Zamperini pushed hard, passed his rival, and won. The last thing he heard, as the guard’s club swung into his skull, was a chorus of voices shouting in triumph.” (Taken from Runner’s World magazine, January 2013, “Lifetime Achievement: Louie Zamperini” by Laura Hillenbrand)

Louie, now 96, made an impact on that prison and continues to impact people with his story today. How cool is that??? The amazing thing is that God has an epic story written out for each one of us. He has a “good, pleasing, and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2), we just need to beware of conformity. Transformation by the “renewing of your mind” (also Romans 12:2) is God’s way of starting our epic story. I’m super stoked to see what He’s written out, aren’t you?