A large part of listening to life is recognizing when themes emerge and reemerge. This is not a formulaic process, but rather a witnessing of life that involves some degree of pattern recognition. 

As always, I was intending to write you something different entirely, though I forget already what that would’ve been. I was listening to old lectures while I worked today and stumbled on a talk featuring one scholar who has always fascinated me: Joseph Campbell. His work was introduced to me years ago, and his presentation and articulation of myth, life and other forms of activated poetry (that is, life and its expressions), have always been both beautiful and quite interesting to me.

Though the man was limited by the language of his time, so much of his work in the schools of philosophy and psychology holds up. So Campbell, who was a comparative mythologist, studied and analyzed myth in the realm of archetypal psychology. You probably know his work (even if you don’t know him), identifying and popularizing the ‘Hero’s Journey’, which was, and is, a staple of high school English class. If you aren’t familiar, this is something he calls a monomyth, or a framework through which a million stories come to be. We know this to be true as this framework applies to many stories, and many stories are born of this framework. 

This is not what I want to write about, though. Instead, the Joseph Campbell I want to talk about is the one who worked on comparative religion and looked at the way religions exist intrapersonally and interpersonally, that is, within oneself and between one another. This was a man who talked about religion as having this component (not present in all religions) that is more experiential. He calls these religions religions of contemplation. These are faith systems that attribute a sense of the holy to mechanisms such as meditation. 

I know by now the question is, what is the point of all of this? I promise you there is a point that I will get to, eventually. I’m really not here to talk about religion at all, or myth, or meditation. But I want to highlight the way we can and often do attribute divinity to the individual moment of experience. There are loads of scholars who do so; there’s Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. But Mr. Campbell is the one who talks about joyful participation, and that’s what I’m really here to talk to you about.

In this lecture conversation that he has with Bill Moyers on the Power of Myth, it is almost conversationally that he begins to talk about joy and participating in life this way. In extension, this can lend to conversations of play, or love, or any really enjoyable experience of being alive. But Campbell says it differently. 

Before, I said there is no formula for observing the patterns in our lives, but there is a formula for this joyful participation. Campbell says it is in following your bliss. Now this is not some unidentifiable bliss or a call for hedonistic self-indulgence. This is the formula for living well. To Campbell, this is finding what excites you and heeding its call. He says to find what makes you enthusiastic. This is not just simple enjoyment; it is passion. 

So, the whole and honest truth is this message came to me after I fully crashed out yesterday. To keep a long story short, I haven’t fully moved myself out of the place I was when I wrote to you a couple of weeks ago. I am still fighting this urge to give up on this writing and art thing altogether, and it was triggered by yet another barrier which made this path I’m on feel awfully expensive financially, energetically and of course, expensive in time. 

During my breakdown, I am not ashamed to admit I went down the spiral of what it would mean to give up. I tasted what my life would be like without what I am doing and what I have been doing for years. For those newer to my work, it has been five years since I started, and though I’ve made a lot of headway, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. I’m tired, and it’s getting to me; not because the fatigue is too much, but because it is compounded with time, and it’s evidence of years of efforts not fully brought into fruition. But this practice has become a staple not only in what I do daily but who I am. I couldn’t imagine what I would do without it.

So, despite the expensive nature of this path, I doubt I will cave into this urge to give up because it is truly what excites me about life. I feel my life more intimately when I write about it. I feel more connected to you, the reader, every time we speak. I’ve followed my bliss this far, and it has served me well (though it has been hard and frankly beyond what I can often afford). 

Remember when I said that a large part of listening to life is recognizing when themes emerge and reemerge? That’s because today wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this message. This video, which stumbled onto my recommended page, was one I’d seen before. It was five years ago, when I was in university. Campbell was a part of the curriculum. I had been tasked to write about what he meant by following your bliss. 

So, this quickly became not only a lesson in heeding one’s calling but also the process of remembering and forgetting the call and the weight of our answering it. I needed the message then just as much as I do today. When I first heard this lecture, I was living with my parents, directionless and terrified of the world. I could not handle the sorrows inherent to the human condition. But the joyful participation in the sorrows of the world is what Campbell says this is all about. We have to contextualize the crash out; it’s all a part of this.

Back then, I had just begun to sell shitty digital prints on Etsy. I was answering the call to create. I still thought my life was going somewhere else (though I didn’t know where). As time has gone on, it has become more obvious that this bliss has been the guiding light. It was the part of life I could cultivate and alchemize into joy. My Aunt Jan once said, that which lessens the weight of your soul, will be your salvation. She said this just as conversationally as Campbell did. 

So when we talk about direction or guidance or really what to do with all of this, I think it is to follow your bliss as formulaically as Campbell noted. Follow what brings your soul this weightlessness. Do not let the doubts you have or fears of failure add weight to what is made to be light. It is also a reminder of the recurring lessons we confront ourselves with, and which leak into the foundational sense of our security in our meanings, our desires, and our passions. We do not find our bliss and simply allow the magnetism to carry us along. We follow it actively. It is a choice we must make. I think we have to turn toward it every chance we get.