Biography
If you walked up to me as a young man and told me being an artist was in my future, I would've laughed in your  face. My destiny was to become CEO of a major corporation with the company jet at my disposal, drink
three martini lunches and earn piles of cash. Having a degree in mathematics in hand, I set out to become a CPA since I read that a
majority of CEO's at the time came from accounting. I took classes in accounting, passed the CPA exam and got a job at a Big Eight
accounting firm. I was set.
The only problem was that I didn't really like what I was doing. I sat bored in an out of town hotel room channel surfing
and came upon the Joseph Campbell series The Power of Myth. Campbell talked about following your bliss and the conversation
between him and Bill Moyers went as follows:
Campbell: It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but
also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.
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
the 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." 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.
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