Power of Myth

For the past two days, I have been watching Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. This is a fascinating interview of Joseph Campbell, scholar of myths, by Bill Moyer.

Campbell manages to know all the myths that surround the world we live in and their explanation of why we are here. He manages to get to the basic core of them and find the similarities.

He also has developed a life philosophy: Follow your bliss. I have to admit I have heard the “follow your bliss” mantra for quite a while but never knew anything of the man who coined the term and the original meaning of it.

The philosophy is very similar to Shakespeare’s quote of “to thine own’s self be true” It’s simply find the one thing that makes you truly happy and do it, no matter what everybody says about it. It sounds very simple but I have learned since moving back to the hometown of my youth that sometimes it’s easier said than done. I find myself doing things solely for the parental approval or more specifically for the lack of parental nagging. Something about the parental nagging sends me into a tizzy and I find myself doing anything to avoid it even if it makes me completely miserable. Part of it is that my father is quite stubborn and sometimes it’s just less time consuming to suck it up than to listen to his bitching and moaning.

I guess in some ways I’m still trying to find my bliss. I know I liked investigating in a larger city more than lawyering in a small town. I’m not sure if the larger city was due to the fact that no one knew me initially and I could be anyone I wanted. I managed to be me and found compadres. Here there’s expectations and my youthful drama queen self being imposed on me even though I’m not sure how much of that is still here. Oh who am I kidding, more of that is here than I want to admit. But sometimes the people who know you through trying times or see you going through trying times who don’t know all the details see you as someone you are not. I was very private about certain incidents and as a result, seem more of a spazz than I was or am. It’s a “you would cry too if it happened to you” sort of instance.

So yeah. I am in the process of figuring out what I want to do and going for it. What makes me happy and why? For some reason, this question seemed simpler when I was a kid. Maybe I don’t need to know the answer of “why?” Maybe I just need to do something.

For whatever reason my biggest skills seems to be finding people and keeping up with their business. People are always asking “whatever happened to so and so?” and for whatever reason, I know where so and so is and what so and so is doing. I’m not sure what jobs are out there that utilize that skill but whatever it is, I would be brilliant at it.