The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [71]
MOYERS: Always wrong?
CAMPBELL: In matters of this kind, yes. The majority’s function in relation to the spirit is to try to listen and to open up to someone who’s had an experience beyond that of food, shelter, progeny, and wealth.
Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt?
MOYERS: Not in a long time.
CAMPBELL: Remember the last line? “I have never done the thing that I wanted to in all my life.” That is a man who never followed his bliss. Well, I actually heard that line when I was teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Before I was married, I used to eat out in the restaurants of town for my lunch and dinners. Thursday night was the maid’s night off in Bronxville, so that many of the families were out in restaurants. One fine evening I was in my favorite restaurant there, and at the next table there was a father, a mother, and a scrawny boy about twelve years old. The father said to the boy, “Drink your tomato juice.”
And the boy said, “I don’t want to.”
Then the father, with a louder voice, said, “Drink your tomato juice.”
And the mother said, “Don’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do.”
The father looked at her and said, “He can’t go through life doing what he wants to do. If he does only what he wants to do, he’ll be dead. Look at me. I’ve never done a thing I wanted to in all my life.”
And I thought, “My God, there’s Babbitt incarnate!”
That’s the man who never followed his bliss. You may have a success in life, but then just think of it—what kind of life was it? What good was it—you’ve never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.
MOYERS: What happens when you follow your bliss?
CAMPBELL: You come to bliss. In the Middle Ages, a favorite image that occurs in many, many contexts is the wheel of fortune. There’s the hub of the wheel, and there is the revolving rim of the wheel. For example, if you are attached to the rim of the wheel of fortune, you will be either above going down or at the bottom coming up. But if you are at the hub, you are in the same place all the time. That is the sense of the marriage vow—I take you in health or sickness, in wealth or poverty: going up or going down. But I take you as my center, and you are my bliss, not the wealth that you might bring me, not the social prestige, but you. That is following your bliss.
MOYERS: How would you advise somebody to tap that spring of eternal life, that bliss that is right there?
CAMPBELL: We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth.
MOYERS: When did you know yours?
CAMPBELL: Oh, when I was a kid. I never let anybody pull me off course. My family helped me, all the time, just to do the thing I really, deeply, most wanted to do. I didn’t even realize there was a problem.
MOYERS: How can those of us who are parents help our children recognize their bliss?
CAMPBELL: You have to know your child and be attentive to the child. You can help. When I taught at Sarah Lawrence, I would have an individual conference with every one of my students at least once a fortnight, for a half hour or so. Now, if you’re talking on about the things that students ought to be reading, and suddenly you hit on something that the student really responds to, you can see the eyes open and the complexion change. The life possibility has opened there. All you can say to yourself is, “I hope this child hangs on to that.” They may or may not, but when they do, they have found life right there in the room with them.
MOYERS: And one doesn’t have to be a poet to do this.
CAMPBELL: Poets are simply those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in