Follow Your Blister (Print Version)

Follow Your Blister
From A Rock In My Shoe

By Richard Bradley

www.arockinmyshoe.com

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!

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