Follow Your Bliss

In the face of an uncertain future, is there still relevance to the idea of identifying that which brings us joy… and doing that?

In 2015, when I was recruited to apply for a tenure track assistant professor position at the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts, part of the dog and pony show for each candidate when visiting the campus here in Chicago was to do a 50-minute creative presentation. As I prepared it, PowerPoint slide show and all, the central touchstone I presented was this: Follow your bliss.

Having discovered “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” as part of my undergraduate honors program in the religious studies department at the University of Virginia, there was much about Joseph Campbell’s seminal work I did not grasp, but this I did.

“Follow your bliss.

If you do 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… doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

— Joseph Campbell

Bliss or rapture as Campbell also referred to it. Find that part of yourself which enlivens you, that thing for which you have passion, which brings you joy, a talent which is uniquely yours, something you can share with the world. Find that and do that.

After graduating from UVA, I entered a Masters of Divinity degree program at Yale University with the intent of applying to doctoral programs afterward. My area of focus: primitive Christianity, specifically trying to understand how the religion went from the teachings of Jesus to the foundation of the church which worshiped Christ.

However, during my last year at Yale, I quite literally felt a pang in my gut every day I drove up the hill to the Divinity School campus, something inside telling me I shouldn’t be there. Why?

When I was fourteen, my parents — much to their later chagrin — got me a guitar as a present. I taught myself how to play, then began writing songs. During high school, I performed in coffeehouses. In college, I was a member of a band.

That pang in my stomach was, I figured, my Self telling me if I didn’t at least try to pursue music as a career, I would end up a bitter man filled with regret.

Thus it was, I took a year off from academics. That became the rest of my life.

In going through my presentation at DePaul, I stitched together the circuitous nature of my life-path — academic, pastor, musician, comedian, screenwriter, TV producer, blogger, teacher — and noted how at every critical juncture in my life when presented with a creative opportunity which resonated with my creative instincts, I chose to do that. It hasn’t led to an easy life. I have had lots of ups and lots of downs. However, I am comforted in this knowledge: At the end of my life, I will have no regrets about not having pursued my passion.

Indeed, when I was hired by DePaul and I was given the key to my office at the university, the very first thing I did was pick up a magic marker and write these words on my white board: Follow your bliss.

Every class I teach, I begin the first session and end the last session exhorting my students to follow their bliss. Vocation or avocation. They may know it now. They may not. They may have multiple iterations of their bliss over the course of their lives. My point has been to look beyond financial expediency and the suffocating logic of those who tell us what we should do with our lives. As Campbell says [paraphrase], If you come upon a path, chances are it’s not your path. You have to discover your own path.

But now we have a pandemic. Our classes have moved to online. Movie theaters are shut down. Television production has stopped. The spec script market, which was already teetering, has virtually disappeared. The entire entertainment industry is in massive flux.

Meanwhile, people are dying. There is no clear sense when or even if this crisis will resolve. How will Generation Z and Millennials cope with this?

This morning, my oldest son Will (29), a doctoral student in music composition at the University of Chicago, emailed me this BuzzFeed article today: “For Gen Z, That Hope Was Never There.” America’s Young Adults Have Already Experienced A Lifetime Of National Crises. Here is an excerpt of my response:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “follow your bliss.” When the pandemic broke out and DePaul moved to online classes, it caused me to ask: Does this message have any relevance in such a turbulent time? Does it seem too New Age for this harsh reality? But as I’ve talked with my students about the concept — it’s a key aspect of the Hero’s Journey and storytelling in general — I’ve begun to think it’s actual a radical concept. That in the face of our current social and economic horror, to lay claim to the right to seek something which is deeply authentic to who we are and a source of passion and joy is in some ways entirely illogical, yet profoundly true. Good times or bad, each of us only has one life to live. To not choose to follow our bliss leads to regret no matter the greater cultural circumstance. Besides, an implicit point of ‘follow your bliss’ is that by doing so, we somehow put ourselves on a path in which we meet people or have experiences which can open doors for us.

We can either choose to believe that’s true or not. Isn’t the more radical perspective to embrace that possibility?

Perhaps this is all wishful thinking, a belief in the magic of possibility. And yet, that’s kind of my point: If the future is uncertain, even bleak, rather than give into despair, isn’t the more compelling choice to live in pursuit of our bliss?

We may be entering an era in which the concept of success — at least how we measured it in the past — is replaced by authenticity, that how well we align ourselves with our core essence and give expression to our distinctive voice inside, that is the most important thing. For by recognizing our own unique Self, it becomes much easier for us to acknowledge that capability exists in others. And that is the bridge to empathy and understanding of others.

If you do 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.

The world is a pretty gloomy place right now. We run the risk of giving into hopelessness. If that’s where your head is at, I encourage you to go inside your Self and see if you can get in touch with your bliss.

Then follow it… and see where it takes you.