Rick Warren

I received an email from my mom a couple weeks ago that made a great impact on me. It was an excerpt from an interview with Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life. The interview gave Warrens perspective of what money and fame can do to your life, and that it cant fix those terrible tragedies that life throws at you. His book sold 15 million copies in the last year bringing wealth and fame into his life. In the same year his wife was diagnosed with cancer. This changed their lives forever and he knew that money and fame weren't the only things that mattered. The main focus of the interview was to show us that God didn't put us on earth to fulfill a to-do-list. Hes more interested in what we are then what we do.

This impacted me a great deal because usually when people are thrown into money it can really take their lives and turn them completely around. He kept his values and morals intact and knew exactly what needed to be done in order for his life to stay on the right track. Aristotle said, " that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen-what is possible..."(3)Warren tells us that hes not going to focus on what happened to his wife and with the fame he acquired but what life has for them in the future and what good they can do with what they were dealt. It helps the reader to have a more positive attitude and outlook on life when someone uses this type of writing. Aristotle also talks about plot. The one Warren uses in his interview is the scene of suffering which is "a destructive or painful action, such as death, bodily agony, wounds and the like" (4). As human beings we can relate to the pain he's going through. When the writer gives personal accounts, it helps us to have emotion and it can help us to imitate the behavior Warren is trying to bestow upon us.