Bliss

"Follow your bliss," Joseph Campbell.

I am well familiar with the above quote, have seen it on bumper stickers and it has always kind of annoyed me. Seemed irresponsible. Joseph Campbell tells of overhearing a family in a restaurant where the father is trying to get his son to eat something he does not want to eat, the mother says to not make him do something he does not want to do, and the father replies with astonishment, "what will he turn out like if he does only what he wants to do?" Indeed, how would we turn out if we did only what we wanted to? That is implied in the book, Outliers, too; that people who could follow their passions can achieve great success. But, how many of us have responded to economic necessity and done what we had to do? Might that be true in our providing caregiving too? That we are doing it only because we feel we have to? Campbell says, "The waters of eternal life are here all the time in joy." It seems that finding joy is imperative in whatever we do.