Donald Miller

After decades of failed relationships and painful drama, Donald Miller decided he’d had enough. Impressing people wasn’t helping him connect with anyone. He’d built a life of public isolation, yet he dreamed of meaningful relationships. So at forty years old he made a scary decision: to be himself no matter what it cost. From the author of Blue Like Jazz comes a book about the risk involved in choosing to impress fewer people and connect with more, about the freedom that comes when we stop acting and start loving. It is a story about knocking down old walls to create a healthy mind, a strong family, and a satisfying career. And it all feels like a conversation with the best kind of friend: smart, funny, true, important. Scary Close is Donald Miller at his best.

Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

Scary Close

Claudine

Children learn what’s worth living for and what’s worth dying for by the stories they watch us live. I want to teach our children how to get scary close, and more, how to be brave. I want to teach them that love is worth what it costs.

Love is not a game any of us can win, it’s just a story we can live and enjoy.

I quite disagree with the analogy but I get the point 😂

I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.

What else changes a person but the living of a story? And what is a story but the wanting for something difficult and the willingness to work for it? 

…perhaps, at times, we accidentally tear a little hole in the fabric of reality so sommething on the other side shines through, exposing the darkness of our routine existence. 

Oddly, Hendrix argues, the more a partner exhibits the negative characteristics of our primary caretakers the more passion we will experience in the relationship. At first I found this to be a sad reality but truthfully, in time, I started to see the deception inherent in the primal emotion we often mistake for love.

Hendrix believes when we meet somebody later in life who exhibits some of the negative characteristics of those early foundational personalities, our subconscious recognizes them as the Mommy or Daddy with whom we have unfinished business. Literally, our brains become attached to this random person thinking if we could just fix some of those negative qualities in ourselves, we could have security and never worry about food, shelter, or love again.

Essentially he argues that on a subconscious level we are drawn to the negative characteristics of our primary caretakers. What he means is that when we were children we had parents and older siblings and grandparents and perhaps even teachers with whom we associated our basic needs for survival. In other words, if we didn't please our parents and grandparents, our food, shelter, and love were under threat. 

Of course we will stand and make promises to each other at our wedding but even then, even with a spouse, I've come to believe a person's love for you can't grow unless you hold that person loosely.

He said if we took the logs from the fire and separated themm out in the field, they'd go out within an hour. They'd just lie there cold. He said for some reason the logs needed each other to burn, to stay warm. I dont think he meant anything other than to talk about the fire, but looking across the field back toward the house, I realized how beautiful what he and his wife had built was and how hard they'd worked to keep the fire going. I wanted to build a fire like that of my own.

I used to have a tennis coach in college whod remind us, every time we practiced, that if you're coasting you're going downhill. What he meant was unless we're practicing we're getting worse. And I think something like that is true in relationships too. I think We can fall into reactionary patterns in relationships rather than understanding they're things We build and nurture and grow.

"Don, all relationships are teleological." I asked him what the word teleologica! meant. "It means they're going somewhere," Al said. "All relationships are living and alive and moving and becoming something…”

Well, that’s Viktor Frankl and logotherapy~

Frankl went on to say it wasn't pleasure mankind was looking for, that men only sought pleasure when they couldn't find meaning. If a man has no sense of meaning, Frankl argued, he will numb himself with pleasure.

…I'm starting to wonder if that's not the whole point of life, to be thankful for it and to live in such a way others are thankful for theirs as well.

It was a struggle to think about David and compare his life to mine. More people knew my name, but far more people knew him. I wondered. which was better: to have all the stuff we think will make people love us or have love itself? David had love.

It was actually what he called the oscillating family narrative that is the true story about how the family both succeeds and fails and yet stays together regardless.

It turns out Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University, went looking for common themes of healthy families. His wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities noticed something about her students: "The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges". The article went on to explain about their family history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned." In fact, the "How much do you know about your family?" scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children's emotional health and happiness.

"Oh," Mark chuckled. hat wasn't easy. But it was this single decision I made early on: I decided I wouldn't judge my kids. No matter what they told me, I wouldn't judge them. I might have to discipline them, but I wouldn't make them feel like lesser people for their mistakes…”

“You know, Don, there's a difference between apologizing and asking forgiveness," he said. "An apology is a statement, as informal as a press release, but asking forgiveness involves giving power to the person you're seeking forgiveness from. I had to give my kids the power to choose whether they wanted intimacy with me, they whether they wanted to forgive me. That's a terrifying and clarifying moment.”

It’s as though their family was a refuge, place where everybody could be themselves with no fear of being judged.

If you think about it, parents who are open and honest with their kids create an environment in which children are allowed to be human. And, sadly, parents who hide their flaws unknowingly create an environment where kids feel the need to hide. And feeling the need to hide our true selves from the world is rarely healthy.

Sadly, I’ve noticed the opposite is true too. Ive noticed parents who don't admit their faults have children who are troubled and emotionally restless as though they secretly want to be free from their families so they can be themselves

It's as though vulnerability and openness act as the soil that fosters security.

Ah, which I think is definitely missing in authoritarian parents. Makes sense.

The characteristic is this: kids with parents who are honest about their shortcomings seem to do better in life.

Apparently I finished this book already, seeing that I’ve had some highlights in my Kindle copy, but unfortunately nothing stuck, so here I am.

I love Don Miller’s way with words because he doesn’t force sounding smart/poetic and yet he does sound effortlessly smart/poetic at times, while being funny, too. I guess I expected more from this book because this felt more like 1 giant manifesto than a set of guidelines that are actionable. The only specific thing this book went into was the classification of manipulators, but that’s mostly it.

I guess all Don Miller really wanted to do was to prod you to do something about your pride and shame (which, from what I personally take away, can be mixed up) and be aware of how you connect or don’t. If you’re the type who needs prompts for personal reflection (which can be notes for when you go to therapy), this can be a good starting point.

Also this has to be my most highlighted book on Literal so far, and my clippings will serve as a TL;DR of sorts for when time comes that I forget I’ve read this book hehe

Apparently I finished this book already, seeing that I’ve had some highlights in my Kindle copy, but unfortunately nothing stuck, so here I am.

I love Don Miller’s way with words because he doesn’t force sounding smart/poetic and yet he does sound effortlessly smart/poetic at times, while being funny, too. I guess I expected more from this book because this felt more like 1 giant manifesto than a set of guidelines that are actionable. The only specific thing this book went into was the classification of manipulators, but that’s mostly it.

I guess all Don Miller really wanted to do was to prod you to do something about your pride and shame (which, from what I personally take away, can be mixed up) and be aware of how you connect or don’t. If you’re the type who needs prompts for personal reflection (which can be notes for when you go to therapy), this can be a good starting point.

Also this has to be my most highlighted book on Literal so far, and my clippings will serve as a TL;DR of sorts for when time comes that I forget I’ve read this book hehe

Sarah Vaughan

I love Don Miller's writing. It's straightforward and to the point while also putting things into perspective in a beautiful way. His anecdotes are not self-aggrandizing or irrelevant. His faith has led him to be more humble and open-minded, which is refreshing. 

This particular book was part memoir, part self-help, and part religious/spiritual work on the importance of being authentic. If we aren't authentic, then no one ever really gets to know who we are. If we don't give our whole selves to our most important relationships, including our relationship with God, because we are scared they will hurt us, then we most likely will get hurt because of our reluctance to allow people/God to love us. 

If you're a Christian, I highly recommend reading Don's work, including this one, for his spiritual perspective on relationships in light of Christ and what we are called to do on earth. If you are not a Christian, you will still enjoy this book. Don is not judgmental, he is not arrogant, and he doesn't think he has all the answers. In fact, he admits that he doesn't have all the answers. He is vulnerable and open about his mistakes and his failures, and this is a beautiful work on the relevance, effects, and importance of community and love.

Les Reynolds

Offered some really good insight. Felt like it dropped the good stuff early and then petered out a bit.

Grady Scott Weston

I've been a big fan of Don Miller's work for several years now. In my opinion, he hits a great balance in this work between being authentic and transparent with the reader and using that authenticity to connect with the reader through telling his own story. Highly recommended!

Scary Close Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

Reviews

Highlights