On Bliss

Ever since he said it, I have been annoyed by Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss.” Perhaps it’s envy of those whose good fairies whispered at their cradle, “Little one, pay no attention to what people tell you. Do what you love and all will be well.” I did not have a fairy bending over my cradle. Instead, I had a guardian angel, who said, “Be a good girl and do as you’re told.” Sometimes I wish that I had had that fairy, or even Joseph Campbell, at my cradle. What would my life have been like? Where would I be now? 

The fairies have won out over the guardian angels, and today’s children are encouraged to follow their bliss as routinely as they’re told to eat their veggies. This is not without its problems. For those who were brought up as I was, there was comfort in believing that if we were good and did as we were told all would be well. Within those boundaries, we enjoyed a certain freedom, especially the freedom of not having to make big decisions. A child obliged to follow her bliss has a heavy responsibility on her skinny shoulders. 

History is crammed with tales of geniuses who followed their bliss, usually at great cost—a cost often paid by those who loved them. I’m thinking of the otherwise tender-hearted Rilke, who abandoned his wife and infant daughter to dedicate himself entirely to poetry. I’m thinking of Tolstoy, who after his conversion made his wife’s life a purgatory so that he could follow the new dictates of his conscience. I’m even thinking of the good Saint Francis, who did not hesitate to renounce his father in the public square in order to pursue Lady Poverty. And what about the merely talented, the poets and painters in their garrets, the buskers on their street corners—how heavy a price are they paying for their bliss? 

Given its uncertain results, it’s surprising that Campbell’s short quote had such an effect on our culture. It precipitated an avalanche of authors, gurus, and graduation speakers who urged the multitudes to look deep inside themselves and find their path to rapture. But perhaps Campbell’s idea came at the right moment, when for the first time in the history of first-world nations the children of street sweepers could become astronauts. And it was also a welcome reaction against the unthinking compliance that religion and society had for centuries regarded as the highest form of virtue, especially for women. 

But this bliss advice should be administered with care, or it can produce anxiety in the young (what if I can’t figure out what my bliss is?) and regret in the old (I never found my bliss, and now it’s too late!). Wouldn’t we be better off not aiming quite so high? The belief that happiness is inversely proportional to expectations has a long history, from Buddhists, to Stoics, to some modern psychologists. This is not to say that we should encourage complacency in the young, or even in the old. As Aristotle and my mother advised, moderation in all things. 

Maybe the problem lies in the word “bliss,” with its sensuous sibilants, which connote a heaven-on-earth, floating-on-air, uninterrupted felicity such as even Saint Teresa of Avila experienced only momentarily in her mystical transports. Instead of following our bliss as if it were a balloon floating just beyond our reach, a more reasonable practice might be learning to find it right here, today, in whatever is afforded us by the brains, talent, and luck that we’ve been granted, and be content.

  

My Brain, My Gut, and Sister Mary Ruth

My brain, my gut, and Sister Mary Ruth--my high school English teacher--reacted to the news of Trump's Covid infection:

Gut: Gasps, adrenaline surge, animal excitement. 

Brain: This could be the equivalent of the Clinton emails! 

Gut: But what if Trump gets really sick/dies and the Proud Boys decide that it’s the Democrats’ fault?! (Fight/flight response sets in). 

Brain: Serves Trump right that he got sick. 

Sister Mary Ruth: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

Brain: This could be the road to the first woman president!

Gut: Torrents of adrenaline flood system. Heart rate up. Feeling as if could—no, must—run a mile. Not an unpleasant sensation. 

Sister Mary Ruth, warningly: Ahem! 

Brain: Whiff of shame followed by twinge of conscience. 

Gut: Pulse rate down. Desire to run mile vanishes. 

Brain: But he KNEW that Hope Hicks had the virus and he STILL attended the fund raiser. He deserves what’s coming to him! 

Sister Mary Ruth, wags finger: That’s enough, now. 

Gut: Slight feelings of fatigue, or maybe indigestion. Also strange wired sensation, despite no additional coffee. 

Brain: Would be wise to close laptop. Maybe take nap? 

Gut: Must check updates. Trump cancels call with governors! Pence says Trump “just fine”! Should sic Sister Mary Ruth on VP, for telling fibs. 

Mind: Speaking of which, what if whole thing is another one of Trump's lies? 

Gut: Heart rate up again. Throat constricted. Nap? As if. 

Sister Mary Ruth , quoting Saint Teresa: “Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you…all things are passing…God alone is sufficient.” 

Words to Wash By

Here are some alternatives to the Happy Birthday song which, as you know if you haven’t been living on Mars for the last two weeks, we’re supposed to sing twice while washing hands to ensure that we scrub for the mandated twenty seconds. It’s annoying enough to put up with the dry skin caused by all this washing, but who wants to sing Happy Birthday a zillion times a day?

Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist teacher, suggests that we replace Happy Birthday with some version of a loving kindness meditation, such as:

May all beings be healthy

May all beings be safe

May all beings be content

May all beings live with ease.

Say it twice, and you’ve done your twenty seconds.

I like that the prayer includes not just me, or my family and friends, or humanity in general, but all beings--the fox and the weed, the bee and the stone. It is such a sensible set of wishes, too, progressing logically from the essential to the contingent. Health comes first, since if you’re sick nothing else matters, followed by safety—you may be the picture of health, but you won’t enjoy it if you’re anxious all the time. I also love the modesty of the wishes expressed. The prayer says nothing about happiness, but settles for the more humble, attainable, and reliable contentment, and ends with the wish that all beings may live with ease—not successfully, or interestingly, or excitingly, but simply with ease.

What does living “with ease” mean, exactly? I imagine myself floating around the house in flowing garments, watering the plants, brushing the cat, and facing with smiling equanimity whatever unimaginable trials The Virus may bring. It’s something to aim for anyway, which is why it’s good to repeat the prayer twenty times a day.

I have also timed, for your convenience, an abridged version of a prayer by Saint Teresa of Avila, which soothes me with its rhythm. Say it twice, and then rinse:

Let nothing disturb you,

Let nothing frighten you.

All things are passing,

God alone is sufficient.

On a more secular, ecological note, and especially if you are stuck in quarantine, you could recite twice this bit of loveliness by Emily Dickinson (I’ve cut one line to fit the time):

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

Dame Julian of Norwich was a medieval anchorite—she self-quarantined with her cat in a cell attached to the church—and lived through the Black Death and other horrors, so she knew what she was talking about. Here is her capsule of stubborn optimism:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

This one you have to say three times to hit the twenty seconds, but feel free to mutter it throughout the day, if you’re feeling stressed.

Only A Woman

When she was seven, the future Saint Teresa ran away with her brother to seek martyrdom among the Moors in Africa. An uncle found them outside the city walls of Avila and dragged them home. Later, as a Carmelite nun, she crisscrossed Spain on muleback, cleaning up corrupt convents, founding new ones, and doing battle against resistant clerics. And all the while she was writing masterpieces of literature that endure to this day, making friends with that other great mystic and writer, Saint John of the Cross, and having ecstatic visions of God.

Although she'd been dead for four centuries, Teresa's power radiated all the way through the chalk dust in our classrooms and the ink stains in our uniforms."She was a mystic, a writer, a reformer, a theologian, and a doctor of the Church," the teacher told us "even though she was ONLY A WOMAN!"

For us, Teresa was a no-nonsense saint, grown-up and bold, with none of the sickly prettiness of the little virgin martyrs (Lucy, Agnes, Margaret, Cecilia, etc.) whose main merit seemed to consist in their refusal to have sex. In the 1950s, a decade that revered domesticity, and in a culture where virginity, followed by marriage and motherhood, were practically the only options for women, Saint Teresa showed us a different picture of how to be a woman: brave, intelligent, determined, a leader of women and men.

If Teresa of Avila had been the only model held up for our admiration, all would have been well. But in counterpoint to the bold image of the saint we were offered a list of tamer, more "feminine" virtues: we were urged to be patient and humble, and to always think of others before ourselves. Unquestioning obedience was at the top of the list, as was the strictest chastity. "When you go to bed at night," I remember one of my German nuns advising us, "do not let your hands wander all over your body." (Years later, my college roommate said I was the only person she knew who fell asleep with her arms straight at her side, like a corpse in a casket.)

But it was that trio--humility, selflessness, and obedience--that was the most effective at quashing our girlish spirits. How could we nine- and ten-year-olds reconcile those ego-stifling virtues with the drive and assertiveness that Saint Teresa must have possessed in order to achieve all that she did?
It was a dilemma that we were too young to solve, and it caused us much confusion and uncertainty.

It was not altogether bad to have our vision of the indomitable aspects of Saint Teresa's character tempered with the milder virtues. But I shudder to imagine what life would have been like for us girls without the image of the great Saint fighting for justice, writing books, founding convents and monasteries. Years before we heard of Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem we had Saint Teresa of Avila, in her sandals and brown habit, riding her mule in all weathers, showing us what a woman could be.