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.

  

Love and Work

“If I died tomorrow,” my mother used to say, “your father would mourn for the rest of his life. But if they took away his violin, he’d be dead within a week.” She didn’t say this bitterly, or with animosity towards the violin with which my father earned his living, or the piano on which he composed whenever he had a free minute. She knew that as a woman she had no rivals. “With my music and you, I will be the happiest man on the planet,” he wrote while he was courting her. But my mother was right when she said that he wouldn’t be able to live without music. 

In the family mythology, my father was considered 1. a saint, and 2. a happy man. The saint part I heard mostly from his mother, who would sigh and look towards heaven whenever she said his name. But both sides of the family were united in their admiration for how hard he worked and never complained nor lost his temper. Here again, my mother had a more nuanced view of the man she loved: “Yes, your father is very good. But he’s not a saint. Mostly he just doesn’t care enough to get involved in things that don’t have to do with music.” 

This led directly to part 2 of the family myth, that my father was extremely happy. How many times did I hear my mother say to him, with a rueful smile, as she struggled with some domestic issue, “As long as you have your violin, nothing bothers you…” One of the things that did not bother my father, but did bother my mother, was his relative lack of ambition or, put another way, his contentment with the way things were. 

“Tonight we’re doing Parsifal, with Solti, who is a genius. I can’t wait!” he would say as he was getting into his tailcoat. Never mind that he would have to make his way home on foot because the streetcars would have stopped running by the time the performance ended. Never mind that the next day there were classes to teach at the conservatory, plus symphony rehearsal, plus private students, plus another opera at night. All that mattered was that he would be playing four hours of Wagner under a superb conductor. 

My mother worried about how long he could keep up this pace. If only, she thought, he were more aggressive, would put himself forward, would use his connections, he wouldn’t have to work so hard and would get more recognition. But recognition, which he fully enjoyed whenever it came his way, was far down the list of my father’s concerns. What he really cared about was playing and composing as best he could, all day, every day. 

When we were living in Quito, Isaac Stern came to give a recital. At the end, as my father exulted over Stern’s gorgeous tone and his fabulous technique, my mother asked him if he didn’t find Stern’s virtuosity discouraging. “Discouraging!” my father said, “why would I think that? On the contrary, it makes me want to play all the more.” 

All those years of watching my father find solace in the daily practice of his art imbued me with a sense of the connection between work—good work, that is--and happiness. My father, even my childish eyes could see, had both love and work. My mother had love, but lacked real work. I knew without a doubt that, despite his monstrous workload, my father was the happier of the two. 

I wanted to be happy like my father, but I was not a man. I was consigned by fate to my mother’s domain, where love and its attendant concerns— rearing children, looking nice, thinking and talking about feelings—held sway. Later, as an adolescent, I remember coming home from school, wanting nothing more than to go into my room, close the door, and write in my diary, and seeing how desperate my mother was for me to sit down and confide in her. “So that’s what happens when you depend too much on people to make you happy,” I said to myself. 

I have known few people with as deep a passion for their art as my father had. The gods did not bestow an equivalent gift on me. But when I sit down to write I call up the image of my father at the piano, and I try to enter into my work as humbly and wholeheartedly as he did, and on good days I get a taste of the joy that sustained him.

My father and I. Fall, 1960