Follow Your Bliss

I don’t know how I feel about prefacing my thoughts with the line that so many used to excuse their debauchery. But is there not a grain of truth in it? Should we not follow that which excites us the most, which lights a fire not only in our hearts but also under our asses? Right now I feel the seductive thrill of something dangerous, a whirlwind in my mind that both threatens destruction and yet promises the opportunity to recreate ideas that are grander, ideas which my previous comfortable modes of thought disallowed by their very existence.

When I think about my job, I feel nothing but confusion. Every option seems limiting, and every opportunity is dwarfed by the other opportunities that it destroys. Not so with my reading. Brueggemann, Flowers For Algernon, even the Wikipedia entry on Joseph Campbell seem to give life rather than herald death. What is this fascination with myth, with our attempts to put faces on the bits of ourselves that we feel but cannot otherwise express? Why does fiction ring so true while reason-based theology reeks of death? My lack of knowledge relegates me to stumbling and stuttering, gushing almost incoherently about Brueggemann without saying much of anything. I sense the need for myth, I feel it, I resonate with it, and yet I cannot explain it. What good is a conviction if it cannot be communicated? What good is a half-wit scholar without a job? I guess the only thing to do is to follow the rabbit trail and see how deep it goes…