And upon her head she wore a crown... by fishyfish_arcade

1 – Follow your bliss is the nice side of the coin

“Follow your bliss” is something that I’ve seen bandied about in my meandering of the internet and books that talk about personal development, self-actualisation, happiness and even some spirituality.

Follow your bliss, however, is the easy part.

It has some tricky parts to it, for sure.  Not tripping yourself up by feeling guilty because life is ’supposed to be difficult’ or feeling like you don’t deserve to be happy.  But this is all just negative mental conditioning, and with an open mind and the question ‘Is it true?’ it doesn’t take long for it all to be seen for the codswallop that it is.

Nope, the hard part is the flip side that doesn’t seem to have managed such aphorismic ubiquity:

When there’s no bliss – do nothing.

This one is the one that requires real faith.  This is the one that challenges what you’ve been taught without giving you anything to go on but the understanding that filling your time with busywork serves only to distract you.

Another annoying aphorism?

Whilst the concept is a simple one once understood, it is not so simple to communicate it clearly.  Indeed, ‘follow your bliss’ has surely been massively miscommunicated in its time, and so it is worth spending a bit of time talking about what I actually mean.  Or rather, to start with, what I don’t mean.

I’m not talking about stopping absolutely everything, if you take it to its conclusion it becomes obviously ridiculous (for one, you have no conscious control over your heartbeat, and even if you did, stopping it is not conducive to longevity).

So “nothing” is an over-simplification.  Rather, we want to be conscious that we are not being strongly drawn to anything at the moment, avoid distracting ourselves with busywork, enjoy what things we are drawn to continue doing, and take this lack of action as part of the cycle of life.

In the middle of winter it can feel like Spring will never arrive, but it does.  (Handy Aphorism of the Moment or HAM: This too shall pass.)

Perhaps other contenders for the flip-side aphorism are:

If your bliss isn’t leading you somewhere else, then you’re right where you should be.

Follow your bliss – even if it leads nowhere.

If you can’t find your bliss, sit still.

Ok, perhaps the first would not qualify as an aphorism, but by the end there I may be getting somewhere.  It’s short, sounds incredibly meaningful, and can only be understood by someone who doesn’t need to be told.

Side rant

This is what annoys me about aphorisms generally.  They’re used in the wrong situations.  They’re basically mnemonics but people throw them about as if they explain the concept they represent.

That’s like handing a flag to someone and expecting them to understand everything (or even anything) about the culture of the country.  (Thought I admit, some flags do have some info in them).

It’s bloody annoying (particularly amongst those who continue to try and espouse wisdom on twitter only to spout bullshit).  Please stop trying to sound clever by randomly shouting out random things used to help people remember stuff.  It’s like tweeting: Richard of York gave battle in vain (colours of the rainbow) or Every good boy deserves food (musical staves) but without the context and with an air of smug self-satisfaction.

2 – There’s another side of the coin to healing too

But that’ll have to wait for another time.

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