follow your bliss

If you follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.

~Joseph Campbell

 

More than any others, these are the words that have shaped and directed my life in recent years. For one who maybe has become confused and veered far off the track of their bliss such as I had, the course correction can create much friction, disruption, and even pain. It very often means saying goodbye to situations and people that one has grown quite comfortable with. Choosing something new always involves *not* choosing something else. And that’s difficult.

In the movies when a formerly floundering soul begins to follow their bliss, the path to getting “there” is usually quick, dramatic and full of public adulation upon crossing the imagined finishing line. I always loved those kinds of stories, cheered the underdog on, and wanted so to believe that miracles could happen and lives could be changed overnight.

I still believe in miracles, although I’m realizing they are more subtle and easily overlooked than I’d previously believed and they rarely happen overnight. And that darn finishing line keeps changing on me, teaching me over and over and over again that the destination is irrelevant.

The journey to following my bliss has been an erratic and rocky one with many dead ends and lots of disappointment. But the feeling that I get is one of continually shedding layers of that which is non-essential, and little by little getting closer to revealing something fresh and genuine that has been all the while silently growing stronger while patiently waiting beneath the surface for her chance to sing.

 

~Cynthia