Following Bliss As Goal... Or... As Process?

I suspect that there are couple of different ways that one can look Joseph Cambell's injunction to 'follow your bliss.' For instance, there is the way of bliss as related to a goal. The actual process involved may not be particularly 'bliss-inducing' and/or 'bliss-generating;' however, the perceived outcome or goal of the process is one that we may be able to associate with the production of bliss.This is probably what happens with parents who work a labour intensive job for years and years--all the way up until their death--simply so that they can experience the bliss of knowing that they set the stage for a better life for their children (not to mention their grandchildren!). The bliss comes in knowing we have attained the larger purpose of caring for another in a way that will make their life better. Perhaps they can even go on to 'do something that they love' with all their heart, mind, spirit and soul.

The above example points to what I happen to see as being some lvery limiting (pre)conceptions with regards to a thorough understanding of what it actually means to 'follow your bliss.' Not everyone needs to be an artist or an authour in order to be able to experience the production of bliss. Bliss can arise through the simplest of tasks. Bliss is in setting an exquisite table and serving your family a delicious, healthy, nourishing meal. Bliss is is knowing you have laid your new-born son down for a comfortable nap, well-fed and swaddled in fleece. Bliss is in knowing you are present for your dying grandmother, as she recounts her final story. Bliss is in showing up for what is being demanded of us, now.

Bliss is, in large part, merely the result of 'answering the call of the moment.'

What if I go to work and I spend time earning money so that my son can eat a healthy meal? Ought that not leave me with some sense of utter satisfaction? What if, then, no matter what I am doing, there can be experienced a residual degree of bliss... precisely because of 'why I am at work.'

It may mean that the why of the process (even though the process may be pain-staking and labourious in a physically-demanding sense... even though the process may be classified in the category of mere drudgery) can result in a most supreme sense of satisfaction and pure bliss. It can mean that bliss is not so much the result of what I do for 'my so-called 'self' as much as what I am 'doing for others.' Bliss, then, as tied to the future and a following generation of descendants for whom I gladly swallow the bitter poison of coaldust in the dank hallows of a West Virgiania mine.. so that a better life might be had by those who come after.

And that to me is the interesting side of Cambell's 'follow your bliss' injunction. The aspect that has not been spoken of as if it existed, let alone mattered. For how can I smile at night when I lay down to sleep when I have been in trenches of the mundane all day long? How can I shiver with bliss when I did nothing for my own sake this day, but everything for everyone else's sake? How can that be? How can I lose myself for the sake of others and go to bed at night so damn full? How is that possible?

Is it because there is one who breathes... one for whom I live for--who doesn't answer the call of the 'I,' but whom that 'I' serves?