Follow Your Bliss: Wise Advice or Elitist Rhetoric? (Part Two)

Follow Your Bliss

My favorite scene in the 2009 film Up in the Air is the one in which Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is sitting across from yet another victim of his company’s “services” – terminating employees for firms that don’t want to do the dirty work themselves. Bob is of course very angry and he is crying. He is concerned about what his children will think of him now that he is jobless and unable to provide them with what they need and want. Here is what Ryan does:

RYAN: Your children’s admiration is important to you?
BOB: Yeah. It was.
RYAN: Well, I doubt they ever admired you, Bob.
BOB: (looks up shocked and pissed) Hey, asshole, aren’t you here to console me?
RYAN: I’m not a shrink, Bob. I’m a wake-up call. Why do kids love athletes?
BOB: Because they screw lingerie models.
RYAN: No, that’s why we love athletes. Kids love them because they follow their dreams.
BOB: Yeah, well I can’t dunk.
RYAN: But you can cook.
BOB: What are you talking about?
RYAN: (Picks up Bob’s resume.) Your resume said you minored in French Culinary Arts….How much did they first pay you to give up on your dreams?
BOB: (flat) Twenty-seven grand a year.
RYAN: And when were you going to stop and come back and do what makes you happy?
BOB: Good question.
RYAN: ….I see guys who work for the same company their entire lives. Clock in. Clock out. Never a moment of happiness. (Pauses for effect.) Not everyone gets this kind of opportunity. The chance for rebirth. If not for yourself…do it for your kids.

Bob’s eyes begin to water again. He’s a changed man.

Is Ryan serious about encouraging Bob to go back and follow his dream again or is he just leading him on so he can get him out the door and move on to the next “terminee”? It really doesn’t matter. Does real life imitate life in the movies? Maybe not. But that is not the point. The interchange between Ryan and Bob is there to make us think: Am I doing what I absolutely must do to be myself? Is there any reason I cannot be doing what I love to do right now? If I cannot follow my bliss at this moment, can I make and follow a concrete plan to do so in the future?

***

In a recent TED Talk, entitled “Enough with the Hero’s Journey Already,” speaker Colin Stokes lampooned Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey, or the monomyth – which involves following one’s bliss – by pointing out that the heroes in the movies he watched while he was growing up in the 1980’s were all like him: white, male, straight, and able-bodied. Using the terminology of the monomyth, he told his audience that he learned that he was not the protagonist in his life when he embarked on “a journey of some significance…and crossed a threshold into a strange new world…parenthood.” Stokes’s argument is similar to Miya Tokumitsu’s in that he equates the hero in the hero’s journey with a narcissist member of a privileged elite.

The real point of Stokes’s talk is how we take for granted the built-in biases of our culture and society, how we fail to recognize that we have often been the antagonists in the lives of others – racial minorities, women, the disabled, the LGBTQ community – a situation he came to fully recognize when he saw films like 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, and 42. At the end of his talk he says, “When white people like me go to 12 Years a Slave and The Butler we might feel excluded; we might even feel antagonized. That’s probably a good thing; at least it has been for me. It’s one of those moments where I’ve been jolted off the monomyth into real life, where I’ve had to ‘protagonize’ someone else and ease up a little on the heroism and … grow up.”

Like Miya Tokumitsu, Colin Stokes employs a construct of convenience to shore up his argument. While his essential point is valid, his representation of the hero’s journey reflects either a deliberate misinterpretation or a lack of understanding of the monomyth. I suspect that Stokes has not in fact read Joseph Campbell in any depth; if he had, he would know that in order to identify and articulate the concept of the hero’s journey Campbell studied the mythology and cultural practices of numerous societies throughout history (none of which was white). He would understand that it is not possible to be “jolted off the monomyth into real life” because the monomyth is real life.

And if Colin Stokes knew anything about the life of Joseph Campbell, he would be aware that Campbell was not a movie-goer; he only saw Star Wars at the invitation of George Lucas because Lucas’s film was so profoundly inspired by the idea of the hero’s journey. Moreover, it is not Campbell’s fault that the predominantly white male overlords of the Hollywood studios presided over the creation of white male cinematic heroes. Again, if Stokes had studied Campbell’s life and work he would recognize and acknowledge Campbell’s deep respect for the cultures and religions and philosophies of the American Indians, and of India and Japan; Campbell was convinced, in fact, that these societies had achieved a greater understanding of how to live a happy and fulfilled and harmonious life than those of the Judeo-Christians.

***

In an ideal world, everyone would be able to follow his or her bliss. Because the world is not ideal – it is filled with greed, violence, inequality, poverty, and yes, exploitation – should we therefore teach our children that seeking and following the path onto which they are called is narcissistic or elitist, and that we should instead, as Miya Tokumitsu says in an interview with the CBC’s Michael Enright, “Do what’s right and try to love that”? As there is, in fact, no mutual exclusivity between doing what you love and doing what’s right, every person – mainstream or marginalized, of the majority or in a minority, young or old – should be encouraged to follow his or her bliss. Students – black, white, Hispanic, female, gay, straight, transgendered, disabled – should hear the stories of those who have followed their bliss and be guided and counselled to find and follow their own bliss.

The views that I have expressed here are surely naïve, unrealistic, utopian, simplistic. But if each of us asked ourselves if “reality” was making us happy, if “reality” was giving us a life of fulfillment, if “reality” was creating a better world for all, if “reality” was the legacy we wanted to leave for our children, could we honestly answer “yes” to each question? If we imagined ourselves doing what we truly loved to do, would we not also imagine ourselves to be less angry, more excited about life, kinder, more loving, more generous, less frustrated?

If following your bliss is naïve, I cast my vote in favour of naïve.

Image Credit

“Follow Your Bliss” by Elizabeth Cooper. Creative Commons flickr. Some rights reserved.

Recent Ross Lonergan Articles:

• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Four
• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Three
• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Two
• The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part One
• Bullying, Fear, And The Full Moon (Part Four)