Might The Challanges Of Love and Work Be Much The Same

Discovering the work we were meant for, is not, oddly enough, unlike the process of seeking out the one whom we were meant to love more than any other. There is both a sincere desire to finally 'meet our match,' as well as a healthy dose of 'romanticism' in searching for the perfect job as there is in searching for the perfect lover.

On the side of romanticism rests both our sense of possibility--as we feel what can be (that stirring in our soul that compels us to head in the direction of a fulfillment we can sense on the periphery of our lives, a fulfillment we desire to draw nearer and ever nearer to)--along with many exaggerations of what those possibilities both include and invite into our lives. Romanticism in work, as in love, seems to suggest that we are going to be able to 'have it all' and forever rest easy in our being able to 'have it all.' The perfect job will bring our soul to rest. The search will be over. Our being will relax into its appointed destiny.

Many a college graduate has struggled with the fact of their having gotten a degree in the field of their choosing, only to go to work in that profession that is aligend with their passion and discover that they are not ultimately satisfied. Just as in love, the deflating hangover bourne of one's 'great expectation' comes about. Why are thing still difficult? Why is there still struggle? Why is there not that peace and perfect satisfaction that one imagined there would be back when this day was a faint dream of adolescence? Why is there not more 'bliss' if we are indeed 'following our bliss' as Joseph Campbell invited us to?


Integral Work Is A Stretch

I certainly went through a stretch in my life when I assumed that 'following my bliss' would result in me 'feeling bliss'... and feeling it all the time! Now, though (after a few years more exerience with the vagaries and vicissitudes of human existence), I am firmly convinced that you can 'follow your bliss' and not experience deep, penetrating bliss for extended periods of time.

Direct, personal experience suggests to me that there are peaks and valleys in the experience of 'following your bliss.' It is perhaps like realizing that you have disocvered your soul-mate, only to go through the delfating period of post-honeymoon blues that are oftentimes just a simple 'fact of life.' If this is the case--as I believe it to be--then there is a danger that comes in our assuming that difficulty is synonymous with our no longer being where we belong, i.e., we are not with the person we belong with; or we are not in the job we belong in.

I have not personaly heard this expressed by anyone. Experience, however, tells me that you can 1) be actively following your bliss, while 2) not feeling particularly blissful about it!

Just as you can be in a relationship with the man or woman of your dreams, and still go through difficult stretches of time--times that usualy 'strengthen the relationship'--so, too, can you be 'following your bliss' and go through periods of work that seem nothing but tedious and pain-staking. Perhaps this suggest why bailing out when the 'going gets tough' is often the worst thing we can do for ourselves, let alone for others. For it may be in the 'blissless' moments that we are moving towards a much greater and deeper experience of bliss itself? It may be that difficulty and struggle are passages---birth canals--where intense pressure is felt as we are bourne into a whole new dimension of experience--experience that leads towards more Integral* Work... and more Integral* Love.


*(By 'more Integral' I mean to say, 'less partial.')