Bliss: 1. perfect
untroubled happiness 2. a state of spiritual joy
Blister: 1. a painful
swelling on the skin containing fluid 2. metaphor for a rock in one’s
shoe
Anyone
who’s had a dog for more than a nanosecond has learned
the one sure way to his heart. Food. Preferably yours. Just open a
box of Girl Scout Cookies and old T-Bone will be your best pal forever,
or at least until the box is empty. Leave some spaghetti sauce on
your plate and Petunia will give you “the look”—You
gonna eat that? Take Rocky with you to the dry cleaners and he’ll
be all over, under and behind the counter like a U.N. inspector looking
for WMDs. Every place of business, in the canine view, is a potential
buffet with eating opportunities stashed behind every cash register.
My own always-starving
dogs can spot a French fry on the sidewalk two blocks away. Given
unfettered access to food, they will gorge themselves sick, upchuck
on my carpeting, and then ask what’s for dessert. They’ll
circle an empty food bowl like the moon orbiting the earth. If they’re
not baying at the moon they’re baying at my moo gu gai pan. They
think the pursuit of food is an unalienable right. They pray to food,
and in the name of food give thanks. Food is great, food is good.
Food, thank you for our food. Food is the fountainhead of my dogs’
spiritual joy. Like chasing a dirty tennis ball or sniffing a new
butt, food is their bliss.
But my veterinarian tells
me that dogs should not be allowed to follow their gastronomic bliss
unrestrained. A little indulgence here and there is okay, but a dog
that is allowed to eat to his heart’s content will be waddling
around the back yard before you can say Pillsbury Doughboy. Like their
super-sized human counterparts, they will be at risk for a whole host
of illnesses ranging from heart disease to lameness. So for a dog,
following his bliss can have grave consequences.
Many homo sapiens, on the
other hand, have come to embrace some sort of Neo Age of Enlightenment
which promises that following one’s bliss is, indeed, "a
good thing." Capitalizing on an idea first made popular by the
mythologist Joseph Campbell, Follow Your Bliss, became a popular
self-help book of the eighties. The memo of the day was to just “Do
What You Love, The Money Will Follow.” Recognizing a good thing
when they saw it, it wasn’t long before an army of self-appointed
happiness gurus jumped on the Bliss Express, taking legions of easy-to-fleece
believers for a joy ride to the promised land.
The cause of much of our
unfulfilment, these Pied Pipers preach, is that in our “efforting”
to succeed—indeed, even to survive—we are struggling against
our true inner nature. We misguidedly opt for security and safe careers,
we’re told, trusting that with the right education, training
and practice we will at least have a shot at clawing our way to the
top of the happiness ladder. Not good enough, they say. What we really
should be doing is pursuing what makes us happy in the first place.
In other words, act like a dog.
The New Prophets’
conjecture is that we will never be truly happy until we are following
our bliss. Hence, the accountant who has a hankering to do stand-up
comedy should just quit his dull-assed job and get himself to an open
mic night. After all, the money will definitely follow and he will
soon be needing an accountant himself—not to mention an agent,
a manager, a producer and a couple of bodyguards. The young school
teacher whose musical aspirations go unfulfilled while teaching music
appreciation should “just do it!”—pursue that opera
thing if she feels it is really her bliss. Don’t look back, it’s
alright. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Don’t worry,
be happy. Follow your bliss.
Hello? E. T., phone home.
I don’t buy it. For
a couple of reasons, this notion seems to me to hold about as much
water as Martha Stewart’s . . . okay, her colander.
For starters, following
your bliss is a spiritual journey, not a career path. Not that’s
there’s anything wrong with taking a spiritual journey. Hey,
I’m a spiritual guy, too—I don’t eat veal unless it’s
wiener schnitzel. The problem is when it becomes a mantra. It promotes
the imposing assumption that God put each of us on this planet merely
to follow his Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I acknowledge that many
people believe their Lord has predestined them to do one absolute
thing with their lives but, George W. Bush notwithstanding, I don’t
buy it. It smacks of religiosity. I have a hard time wrapping my head
around the concept of God as Movie Director who casts us in supporting
roles in His films. If that were the case why did He forget to give
us the script?
Bliss following also encourages
a misguided sense of entitlement. It makes us feel that our bliss
is some kind of birthright. It implies that if we just follow our
hearts we have every right to be successful. No Virginia, it doesn’t
necessarily work that way.
Take that music appreciation
teacher who loves opera. What if she has only an average voice? If
she starts following her bliss she’ll be in for one hell of a
rude awakening. Does she keep pursuing her singing all her life, never
getting anywhere? What happens if she stops following her bliss? Does
it mean she’s finally grown up? Or has she merely thrown in the
towel? Either way, she’s left feeling at least a little bit like
a failure. Sure, perhaps it’s better to have tried and failed
than to never have tried at all. But bliss following more often than
not can become a perilous and addictive habit.
For example, probably no
other profession in the world attracts more bliss followers than that
of acting. Now don’t get me wrong. I know a number of actors,
some of them very successful, and I have the greatest respect for
them. And I was a drama major in college and have appeared in a couple
of movies myself. It’s a lot of fun and applause is great for
the ego. But I often wonder when I meet a ditzy aspiring thespian
here in New York—say waiting on my table—if she ever asks
herself what it is about her wonderful persona that would make me
want to go to the theatre and pay $100 to see more of it. Perhaps
it’s no coincidence that actors are often referred to by their
directors and producers as “the kids.”
Another thing that bothers
me about following your bliss is that many of us just don’t know
what the heck our bliss is in the first place. In “The Heartbreak
of Mediocrity” I talked about the fact that I have a wide range
of skills and interests—from photography and public speaking
(skills) to history and politics (interests). Because I have done
so many different things in my life it is hard to say just where my
true bliss lies. They are all blisses. Hell, life is a bliss. Shaboom,
shaboom. Yada, da, da, da, da.
I often wonder about those
over-achieving kids in certain sports. How does the young champion
ice skater know, for example, that her bliss is in the rink if she’s
never tried anything else? How does Tiger Woods know that golf is
his true bliss if he’s had a club in his hand since the day he
learned to walk? Come on, the only bliss a one-year old golfer understands
is the thrill of a good poop in his Pampers. What if old Tiger discovers
later that he really wants to be a cartoonist? Well, I guess he’s
set well enough now that he can do whatever he wants. But my point
is, discovering one’s bliss can take a lifetime. Anna Mary Robertson,
aka Grandma Moses, was in her mid-seventies before she started painting
seriously.
But I’m forgetting
that that’s all old twentieth century stuff. Silly me. We’ve
progressed considerably since then. Today we can turn to those with
credentials in blissology—so you need not actually waste your
life looking for your bliss. We now have a multi-billion dollar industry
consisting of counselors, motivational speakers, personal coaches,
authors, psychiatrists, clergymen, teachers, ad nauseam, all ready
and willing to help you find your bliss and guide you along your own
personalized yellow brick road. It’s like a big Easter Egg hunt—with
everyone searching for their bliss in the most unlikely places while
their grinning gurus applaud them ever onward while picking their
pockets.
How did we get so screwed
up? I suspect it is an effect of our never-ending “pursuit of
happiness” and we can all blame old Thomas Jefferson and his
pals at the Second Continental Congress for it. They acknowledged
that—ever since the Fall of Adam—everyone not only wants
his own apple, he wants apple pie. A la mode. A couple of hundred
years later this yearning reached new heights. Bliss following became
inexorably associated with success. There was even a magazine in the
late eighties called Success.
The problem is, what is
success? In my sales training classes back in those days I would ask
my students that question. We’d get all the responses up on a
flipchart like we were divining the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
There would be almost as many definitions as there were people in
the class. “Success is making a lot of money.” “Success
is reaching the top of the corporate ladder.” “Success is
being loved.” “Success is winning friends and influencing
people.” “Success is having what you want and wanting what
you have.” It’s no wonder Joseph Campbell’s teachings
became co-opted by the self-help industry. Since no one could define
bliss any more than they could success, bliss became success’
fallback position. If you couldn’t be successful at least you
could follow your bliss. The only thing missing was Bliss Magazine.
Thankfully that era is
over, although there are still remnants of it around. It’s great
to follow your bliss when you’re doing great. It’s a luxury.
But as the world becomes more globalized and people see their jobs
being outsourced overseas, bliss becomes elusive. It’s hard to
follow your bliss when you’re out of work.
That’s why I’m
espousing a new approach to the pursuit of happiness. Instead of following
your bliss, FOLLOW YOUR BLISTER!
If you buy a new pair of
shoes and go out and do the March of Dimes thing before they are broken
in chances are you’re going to get a blister on your heel. The
first thing you do when you get home—after downing a cold one—is
to give it your full attention. You soak your foot, perhaps lance
the blister, throw a little Neosporin on it and cover the whole mess
with a band aid to protect it. The next day you wear your dirty old
sneakers. In short, your blister has determined your action for the
next couple of days. That, dear reader, is following your blister.
Just take a gander around
you. The universe is rife with blisters—pustulant sores in need
of our attention. It’s no coincidence that every advance in civilization
has come about because someone followed his blister. The cave man’s
blister was that he had to drag those heavy hairy mammoths he’d
slain back to his condo by sheer brute strength. When that shit got
old he invented the wheel. When he got tired of eating his old lady’s
cold cuts he went on a quest for fire, eventually learning how to
make it himself.
Thomas Edison wasn’t
just an inventor. He was a man with more blisters than most anyone
else in American history. Granted, Edison had a talent for things
with a spark. Playing with electricity was his bliss. But if he had
taken today’s advice and merely followed his bliss the only thing
he might have accomplished would have been to electrocute himself.
Instead, one his first blisters was that he couldn’t read Robinson
Crusoe late at night. Darkness tends to do that to a lot of people.
So he invented a little thing called a light bulb. According to the
Edison Birthplace Museum, Edison was awarded 1093 patents. Now that’s
a guy who had a lot of blisters—a lot of rocks in his shoes.
Say what you will about
Henry Ford, another whose bliss was inventing. But his blister was
that he couldn’t build an automobile inexpensively enough that
the average person could afford one. So he invented a new kind of
assembly line where cars replaced cattle on a conveyor belt.
Albert Schweitzer’s
bliss was medicine, but his blister was the lepers of Africa. Albert
Einstein’s bliss was physics, but he got a brain blister when
he tried to wrap his head around the concepts of gravity and time.
John Edwards’ bliss was the law, but his blister was fighting
for the common man in the courtroom. Bob Hope’s bliss was comedy,
but one of his blisters was that so many servicemen and women had
to spend Christmas away from their families. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
bliss was preaching; his blister was the plight of African Americans.
B. B. King’s bliss is Lucille (his guitar); his blisters can
be felt in the blues of his music. I don’t know what Britney
Spear’s blister is.
Bliss is music. Blister
is the words to the song. Bliss is writing. Blister is the story.
Bliss is photo blogging. Blister is photo journalism. Bliss is being
a rock star. Blister is what makes the star rock.
The difference between
bliss and blister is like the difference between process and progress.
Like process, bliss makes you feel good all over. It’s a spiritual
high colonic. I once worked with a person who never met a process
he didn’t bliss over. He had a form for everything. The only
problem was, while everyone was busy filling out his forms, surveying
each other, gathering, analyzing and certifying data, nothing was
being accomplished. He was like a movie producer who never got beyond
his storyboard.
People who follow their
blister have chosen a path of “creative discontent.” Creative
discontent occurs when you marry your blisses to the rocks in your
shoes—your blisters. Should you only have one bliss and one blister—say
photography is your bliss and your blister is that many children grow
up disadvantaged—the match is simple. Photography=Disadvantaged
Children. Such a match could lead to several remarkable results, depending
on your other abilities and interests. You could pursue photo-journalism
exposing the plight of disadvantaged children in your pictures. You
could teach photography skills in an after-school program in the inner
city. You could work with camera manufacturers to supply cameras to
schools.
Obviously, following your
blister becomes more problematic when you have more than one bliss,
can do more than one thing and have more than one rock in your shoe.
That’s when you must take the Bliss/Blister Inventory.
Homework. Take a piece
of paper and make two columns. On the left list all your blisses—your
interests, talents, and abilities. On the right list your blisters—the
rocks in your shoes.
Let’s look at a hypothetical
example. Below is a Bliss/Blister Inventory that includes the two
factors mentioned above, photography and disadvantaged children. I’ve
intentionally kept the lists short and equal of length:
Now try matching up this
person’s blisses with possible complimentary blisters. There’s
probably little match between cooking and politics, unless it has
to do with cooking the books. But cooking could readily be matched
up with feeding the homeless. By drawing a line from blisses to blisters
we might wind up with something like this. Actual results at home
may vary:
Let’s examine more
closely the difference between bliss and blister. I’m going to
use photography since that is one of my blisses yet I’ve have
had little interest in making it a profession—although I have
occasionally earned money with my cameras. So I think I can be fairly
objective about this subject.
Like dogs, there are many
breeds of photographers. The mutts are people like myself—competent
hobbyists who understand the basics of composition and lighting, shutter
speeds and exposure times, films and digital storage media. We take
our cameras with us on special occasions like a trip to the circus
or a local police beating. We snap pictures, embarrass our friends,
make albums, and share our photos. It nice. It’s fun. It’s
satisfying. But it’s not the Holy Grail. I wouldn’t call
that following your bliss. It’s just doing something you like.
In the champion’s
ring stand the majestic pure-bred professional photographers—like
Airedales and Weimaraners. They have an expert knowledge of their
craft. They have lots of equipment. And they have paying clients and
customers.
In between is a third group.
These are the adorable Cocker Spaniels and Poodles who are really
blissed out with their photography. They are more than just hobbyists.
They carry their cameras around with them everywhere they go. They
take pictures of everything—convinced that they can see meaning
in a fire hydrant or a person reading a newspaper on the subway that
you can’t. Their entire lives are “focused” on taking
pictures, although they usually earn their living doing something
else. Photo blogging—where such photographers post their “work”
on the Internet for the world to see—has become a phenomenon
in recent years. Unfortunately, most of it is self-indulgent. Some
of it is crap.
One of three things will
eventually happen to the blissful blogging photographers. Some will
eventually give it up and move onto other things like space exploration
or selling women’s shoes. Nothing wrong with that. I haven’t
checked again this morning, but yesterday this was still a free country.
Others will go into photography professionally and slug it out photographing
weddings, babies, high school proms, factory floors, bottles of perfume
and insurance claims. Honest work, but not as blissful as photographing
graffiti or “chemtrails” criss-crossing in the sky.
And a few will go on to
become a new generation of Richard Avedons and Diane Arbuses. These
will be the blissful photo bloggers who have rocks in their shoe.
They are few and far between, but they’re out there. If they
keep following their blisters with their photography chances are good
that they will make something of it.
A Rock In My Shoe
is all about my blisters. A friend of one of my sisters once asked
her if I was a unhappy person because I write about so many things
that bother me. My sister just laughed and told her, “No, Rich
is a pretty happy guy.” Thanks, Jane.
And that’s where I
think many people get it all wrong. Following your blister is no more
a recipe for misery than following your bliss is one for happiness.
But I would, perhaps, be a miserable person if I didn’t write
about my blisters. Writing is my bliss. Lousy customer service is
my blister. By writing—and I often write letters of creative
discontent to businesses and to my representatives in congress as
well—I am working to change things for the better. Sometimes
I’m successful; often I’m not.
I just love humorous political
columnists like Molly Ivins and Maureen Dowd. They’re always
complaining about something. No doubt either one of them could have
had a "successful" career penning memorable speeches for
politicians, creating clever advertising copy or writing training
manual thrillers. God bless ‘em though, they chose to follow
their blisters and chip away at the foibles of our government and
our politicians. Tom Paine would be proud of them.
One of my favorite humorists,
Andy Rooney, is often called a curmudgeon. I think that’s unfair.
I met him once and he seemed like a pretty nice, happy guy. Sure,
he’s got more rocks in just one shoe than most women have shoes.
Yet I don’t think Andy is an unhappy person. After all, he loves
his dogs, the NY Giants, his grandchildren—and hasn’t he
been married to the same woman for like a hundred years? Perhaps the
secret of both his success and his happiness is that he follows his
blisters.
So my point is, try paying
some positive attention to those things that bother you instead of
viewing them as constipating blockage to your success and happiness.
My grandmother used to say all things happen for the best. Of course,
that was right up there with, “The Lord works in mysterious ways”—never
much consolation to me when I broke an arm or my brother ate the last
cookie. And I still don’t entirely buy it. Some days life just
deals you a crummy hand. But I now trust that if there is a pattern
to one’s blisters—if you keep getting the same rocks in
your shoe—then perhaps you should follow them and see where they
lead you. Today’s rock in your shoe could be tomorrow’s
cornerstone of accomplishment.
Woof!
© copyright 2004 by Richard Bradley. All rights
reserved.
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