Opinion Editorial

THE WELL

By James Strauss

 

When’s the last time you went there?

How are you doing in life?

Is Joseph Cambell’s famous quote “Follow Your Bliss” meaningful to any degree in your life?

Can you even define bliss?

Living in America today is like riding a histrionically operated series of escalators that go higher and higher, and never get anywhere. David Thoreau, or the great Buddha himself, would have one heck of a time living alone and ignoring the constant pulsing and insidious penetration of electronic life today.

Possibly, if you have a substantial trust fund, or a dedicated band of followers you might be able to remove yourself from the onslaught of human communication to the point where you could be considered an ascetic. But would this lead to your bliss?

And and what is bliss, anyway?

According to Campbell, and he was a pretty clever fellow filled with academic knowledge and life experience: “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 that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.”

What it comes down to is feeling good, no matter what your circumstance, situation or participation. Experiencing bliss does not involve dealing with expressed integrity, nearly so much as it does viewing life itself as a never-ending series of extraordinary, ordinary and unaccommodating circumstance.

Have you been to the well lately?

What well?

You know the one.

That place where you go to regroup and recover.

That place where you can be isolated from all of ‘this’ just enough to cease the endless worry, concern, fear and even logical thought. It doesn’t matter whether you take a boat out on the lake or the ocean, turn off the motor and float, or take in the sails and just bob around.

You may go to the mountains, get in a glider and see the world from a new and beautiful perspective, or even hide out in a tucked in window seat aboard an airliner to anywhere.

I term these things and places as going to the well.

Bliss is a natural condition, that cannot be forced or guaranteed.

But it is the result of something happening. The root of happiness is the word happen. It means something happening that’s considered to be good. Bliss, however, is deeper than that.

Happiness is lying on a quiet beach and feeling the rays of the sun warm your skin.

Bliss is a warmth that radiates out from the inside.

Bliss can be experienced anywhere and under any type of circumstances. You can be on your hands and knees on a prison yard, picking up other prisoner’s cigarette butts, and still be filled with bliss. To an outside observer you should be miserable, but your inner self can still be at peace.

I once rode in one of those 007 boats seen in the movies.

It was up the river from Bangkok, Thailand, and I was a real spy instead of Fleming’s fake character with the fake women, and all that stuff.

I’d made a mistake, and the bad guys had chased my partner and I out of the city. The big American V8 engine, pivoting up from a long rear driveshaft, vibrated away.

The ocean wasn’t far away, and the river was rising with the incoming tide. I directed the skipper of the boat to turn into a narrow canal that supposedly led to an alligator farm. My partner was lying in the bottom of the narrow boat. He was staring at me with pure hatred for getting us into this life threatening mess.

I wasn’t thinking good thoughts about him, or life in general, either.

Local Thai families lived in bare thatch hovels along the sides of the canal, right on the water, with little piers running out from their bare pole shacks. Riding along we could see into their homes The rising water had caused them to raise their televisions up on top of tables, and to pull their feet up onto their chairs in order to continue watching until the tide subsided.

They smiled and waved as we passed. The kids ran out on the piers, and cheered us on, while doing tricks for any applause we might give them. There was no applause, though.

My partner sat up and looked around at this passing tableau of local squalor. “How miserable. What awful lives they have. What a bunch of zombie scum, just wasting their days away.” He slunk back down to lay there and glare up at me again.

I looked down at him, and then back up at the waving and laughing families all around us. I nodded down to my partner, more in guilt than agreement, but my life changed as we cruised along those muddy tide-lapping riverbanks. Indeed, there was squalor, poverty, and unsanitary conditions all about. Still there was a sense of contentment among the people I was seeing. Misery was present that day, but it was all inside my boat.

It was unexpected and unplanned, but right then and there, I went to the well on that river tributary.

I went to the well and reflected on the bliss I was seeing, and wanting so badly to be a part of. Their bliss wasn’t my bliss; it could not be.

I had to do something to generate my own bliss.

Bliss grows and thrives amongst others who are already glowing from it within.

I had to decide who I was going to be around.

I had to decide what to do with my career, because, although I had to have money to survive, bliss isn’t a function of monetary worth, or the possession of assets or goods for trade.

Survival matters, but only as a first step. Surviving in misery is only that, it isn’t living.

Can you go to the well, now?

Now that you might have a better idea of what it is?

Can you find the bliss inside yourself, no matter how much circumstances might seem to make it impossible to feel anything at all?

Grief, poverty, post-traumatic stress, fear, and even loathing, can all be transformed into challenging adventures, if you allow the power of your bliss to transform your perceptions.

You have it inside you.

Initially it might be the very smallest of flames, only visible when you get far enough into the well to see them.

Still, go there.

See them.

Fan them.

Come out and watch all those people you thought were miserable. You might discover that they are smiling, laughing, and more than willing to let you share your bliss with theirs.

They won’t have changed at all, but you have.

 

Take a moment, watch and listen to Joseph Campbell