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Follow Your Bliss

© Larry Low

Folklore Table of Contents

Take the opportunity of visiting a locale, that goes by many names and is one that you probably have not as yet laid eyes upon and about which you may know less than nothing. That is as good a place as any to start. How do you prepare yourself for this sketchy destination? Be advised that the only known fact about your destination is that the place overflows with bliss, if you are capable of finding it. Do not be like Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis' mis-guided protagonist, who never had "an experience beyond that of food, shelter, progeny and wealth" (117).

In preparation, you could leaf through travel brochures. You could consult someone who has been there or read travel writers who have written about the hotels and places that are must sees. As well you could delve into how historians have described the people and their triumphs and defeats. If you were to do all of the above, you would have left out a scintillatingly marvelous essential and you would still be at the starting gate.

Following the key word provided in paragraph one, my first choice is to gather up folktales of the place that I wish to visit. It is but a first step in following my bliss. Oh darn, I gave the game away. It is but the first move in cultivating a feel for the people, for it is how they entertain their children that you shall know them. I would then wander into the geography of the place. This week, we are off to who knows where. So if you are ready, we will begin with a memorable tale just as soon as I make up my mind which one to talk about first.

Of course, I am not alone in this undertaking. I have the wisdom of Joseph Campbell to guide me. Campbell was a myth master. In one of his books, entitled The Power of Myth, which is largely a dialogue with Bill Moyers, Campbell says that myth is a "metaphor for what lies behind the visible world" (Campbell xvii). Campbell goes on to explain that he strongly believes that there is "a point of wisdom beyond the conflicts of illusion and truth by which lives can be put back together again"(xviii).

From experience, I understood all too well Campbell's admonition to follow your bliss. A couple of decades or more ago, I was on a writing assignment in Fiji, an assignment that lasted for about two years and which resulted in my being published in eight countries. That was all well and good. However all the time that I weaving stories about the transformation of the "Cannibal Islands" into the modern-day major tourist destination, I had persistently been failing to follow my bliss. Even though I had just published an article in the Tokyo Times which brought swift results, something was missing in my life.