Follow Your Bliss

Pegasus Books, Cuba Mall, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand

There is an email earmarked in my inbox linking to an interview with Joseph Campbell, where he discusses how to follow your bliss, that I took time out of my *busy #sabbaticalled schedule to watch recently:

“If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you. And the life that you ought to be living is the one you’re living somehow. And, when you can see it you begin to deal with people who are in the field of your bliss and they open doors to you.

I say follow your bliss and don’t be afraid and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

A quote like this puts me in mind of Bob Dylan’s Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, which is a resource I return to again and again, especially as a writer struggling to keep self-sabotage at bay.

“Where do you look for this hope that yer seekin' / Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin' / Where do you look for this oil well gushin’ / Where do you look for this candle that's glowin' / Where do you look for this hope that you know is there / And out there somewhere?”

Being on [Chris’s] sabbatical, while fraught with privilege, has put me back on track to follow my bliss. I have the time and space to look for hope while out on my daily speed walks. How do I know I’m on the right track? Because it feels as though while wading a stream that hasn’t yet been bridged, stepping stones pop up one by one underfoot, in time with my crossing, to keep my feet dry. It feels like I’m creating something, just by living, and whenever I get that familiar feeling, I know I’m following my bliss.

It started a few weeks ago, listening to Marc Maron’s WTF interview with Sarah Polley, in which they discuss her now Oscar-winning screenplay for Women Talking. The women in Polley’s movie evaluate three possible responses to sexual abuse within their Mennonite colony: stay and do nothing, stay and fight, or leave the colony.

Then came Legacy of Speed, a podcast about this photograph from the 1968 Olympics:

which I’m familiar with from my poster-selling days but hadn’t before considered the importance of. Malcom Gladwell discusses economist Albert O. Hirschman’s book, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, which lays out three options available to those with a grievance: exit (boycott), voice (stay and speak up), or loyalty (stay, keep quiet, and hope your commitment pays off in the long run.) John Carlos and Tommie Smith, the Olympic runners in the photo, chose voice, and it destroyed their careers. I won’t spoil Women Talking for those of you who haven’t seen it; the women make a different choice, just as valid.

When I juxtaposed the two podcasts, it struck me how both presented the identical set of tools to engage oppression. Both podcasts reveal options - exit, voice (stay and fight) or loyalty (stay and do nothing) - activists can use to facilitate change. The coincidence of listening back-to-back to these two podcasts began to seem purposefully designed.

Then came Because of Anita, which includes a discussion between Professor Anita Hill and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Talk about women talking! From this podcast I discovered another famous image - an ad in the New York Times, paid for by over 1600 Black American women who wanted their support of Anita Hill documented in the historical record.

Professor Leslie Hill holding the NYT ad “African American Women In Defense of Ourselves”, originally published Nov. 17, 1991 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College)

When asked about their motivation for testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee as an act of citizenship, both Hill and Ford describe it similarly:

Ford:

“For me it was in a way a calling…from the country, or from my civic duty, as a citizen, that I had to say something.”

Hill:

“When you have something, and you feel that it’s important, that it’s critical, actually, then you can stand up in a different way then when you’re thinking about it in the abstract. For me the whole idea of patriotism and why I felt it was my responsibility and duty came not just as a citizen but also as a member of the bar. I had felt in my life how important the Supreme Court’s decisions are…and I knew firsthand the importance of…a court having integrity, and the integrity of the court was only as good as the integrity of the members of the court…Also, my civic responsibility came not just as a member of the bar but as a teacher, to students who were going to be members, and in teaching I not only tried to teach them the law but I also tried to teach them their responsibility to the law.”

Bingo. Of the tools available to activists I’d just learned about, both Hill and Ford chose voice, they chose to stay and fight. Out of a sense of duty to whistle-blow bad behavior that would otherwise negatively impact a judiciary accountable for the good of all. But their efforts came to no avail. Even though TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS elapsed between the appointment of Thomas and Kavanaugh. Has nothing changed, I asked myself? Instead, as Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, we saw Amy Coney Barrett replace RBG. While we may momentarily talk truth to power, power will continue to silence us for generations to come.

Hm, I needed to get my hope back. Because of Anita is only four episodes long, and I kept listening. Finding your bliss might just mean making sense of your life, but I don’t want to have to be on sabbatical to do that. I want to do that everyday. And I don’t want to have to wait another quarter of a century for perspectives to change. What the heck is wrong with these tools we’re using, as activists, I wondered?!

In Because of Anita’s final episode, Journalist Irin Carmon offers a few reasons for why progress seems to have stalled. First, government still does not view sexual harassment or assault claims in the same way it does other whistle blower stories. And second,

“The standards by which we evaluate credibility tend to reward winners. So if we are evaluating why should I trust this person over another if it’s an incident in which only two people were present, for example, then we’re using an inherently biased system to say who is more credible. Because the Catch 22 here is that if a survivor was irreparably harmed by what happened to them and they went on to miss work, quit, well how easy is it then to say: ‘oh well she’s just disgruntled. she’s just unhappy that things didn’t work out for her here.’”

This explanation really blew my mind. So it isn’t (as it may, in fact, seem) that the social justice movements I’ve been a part of since high school have not made one iota of progress. It isn’t that feminism has failed. See, we’re not crazy! It isn’t that grassroots activists have toiled for three decades in vain. Instead, “we’re using an inherently biased system to say who is more credible.” Carmon offers us at least one reasonable, rational explanation for why a quarter of a century after the Senate Judiciary Committee disregarded Hill’s testimony, they did the very same thing to Ford.

Now we’re getting somewhere I thought, and as I walked and listened, it’s following my bliss that got me here. I knew what step to take next - as an activist, I knew what inherently biased system to challenge next.

Following my bliss makes me feel like I’m learning from life. But more than that, it has allowed me to write this elaborate blog post, sewing my thoughts together into a coherent narrative, connecting them like a sticher would a quilt. Making something out of nothing to arrive at a larger understanding about how to take the conversation forward in the direction I want it to go, in the direction of the truth. At least until I happen upon evidence of another inherently biased system, which I then need to launch into fighting with all my might.

The Third Place

Able Tasman National Park

It’s been nearly six weeks since my family and I departed Chicago on sabbatical, our destination: Windy Welly. What I knew about Wellington, New Zealand before we left was this (i.e. not much): 1) Bret and Jemaine were from here (they actually met at Victoria University, which is just down the hill from our house) and 2) a good friend from colleges sister lives here, and loves it. Other than that, we were flying blind (I like to travel the way Marc Maron approaches watching movies, without doing too much research first).

Our flight leaving Chicago was delayed by 48 hours, which was just enough to feel like purgatory, but when we finally took off, reverse psychology worked its magic - we were so happy to be ON the flight that it made the trip a breeze. Landing in Auckland, we had our first long black coffees, which (you may remember) I am very familiar with from having spent a year living in Australia, in a van down by the river with Maureen and Jonit, way back in 2000. The two most popular coffees in Australia and New Zealand are the long black and the flat white, and as soon Chris and I had our coffees in hand, I knew we had made the right decision coming here. And (even better) I could tell from the fashion the New Zealanders wore that I had packed correctly: bright, multicolored floral fabrics abounded.

Wellington has a population of 420,000 (it’s about the size of Minneapolis) and the city sits on the southwestern edge of New Zealand’s north island. It is a shipping port built around a bay just east of the Cook Straight.

It is also hilly, very hilly, like hillier than San Francisco. In Wellington it seems that views are prized above all else, in terms of location, and the higher up on the various hillsides you reside, the more real estate cache you possess. The house we were lucky enough to find on sabbaticalhomes.com (username: Midwestern Nice, isn’t that clever?) is on the crest of a Kelburn hill with an excellent view of Lambton Harbor and Matis/Somes Island just beyond.

Sunrise view from our balcony

Sunset view from our balcony, without any color correction!

From what Chris has explained about good fengshui, the house has it: huge windows placed strategically so you can see all the way through the house when standing outside the front door. The house is built of wood and all one level, six rooms stretching out horizontally in the shape of a half moon, with a deck in back facing Oriental Bay, for morning sun, and an enclosed courtyard in front for afternoon sun (and outdoor dining!) I feel like I’m living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in France, except the climate is subtropical; we’re surrounded by palm trees, evergreens and beech trees, with ferns and flowers everywhere. It’s as lush as the jungle, except without many insects or any natural predators.

We don’t have a car, which is lucky for us since roads are extraordinarily narrow, traffic circles are used in place of stop signs (merge like a zip), and (of course) New Zealanders drive on the left-hand side of the road. There is a bus stop at the end of our driveway (literally) and we’re a 20 minute walk to Wellington’s Cable Car, a funicular that takes you directly downtown in minutes.

This is actually the Christchurch tram, but you get the picture. Plus, check out my pants [Italian linen]!

At the cable car sits the entrance to the Botans (Wellington Botanic Garden) through which I tramp for my daily speed walk. The Botans has a rose garden cafe, called Picnic, attached to the Begonia House, where we sat on one of our first mornings eating moist orange and almond cake served with a side of fresh clotted cream and feeling almost too lucky to be alive. The only downside being that cruise ships docked in Wellington bus passengers to what we’ve started to consider “our” cafe, how annoying! Nearby is a Victorian Perfumery called Fragrifert - independent perfumers actually exist here, which I find so lovely. Every small town you visit has its own perfumer; what better way to remember a place than to take home its smell, right?

The neighborhood we live in, called Kelburn, has a small commercial district oversized in sophistication. Let me walk you through the Village: there’s a St. Vinny’s Op Shop, a Four Square (which is very well stocked, independently owned franchise corner store), a crazy good German Bakery where I can actually find fresh baked loaves of Schwarzbrot, a florist, two Indian takeaways, a fish and chips shop, an independent women’s clothing boutique, a posh wine bar, a pub, an antique store, a salon, a liquor store, and not one but two independently owned cafes. And down the road is the vet, so…yes, this place has almost everything. The only thing missing is a fresh fruit vendor and a dispensary (ha ha:) Even the school that Louisa attends is just a two minute walk north of the Village (and a ten minute walk from home).

Which brings me to the Third Place, a concept Chris introduced to me from his days living in New York City. A third place is not home (the first place) and not work (the second place). It’s more like a hangout, a gathering space, except lacking political or socioeconomic boundaries. I’ve mainly noticed it’s a *cool place people of all ages frequent. Everyone is polite, and it’s usually a small business.

Kelburn Village, our third place

People living in the community invest in and support the third place by patronizing it everyday (they spend money there everyday, or they visit it everyday, or both). The third place is nurtured and protected in the same way couples are told to care for their marriage, as a third party. In a good marriage, I’ve been taught - there’s you, your partner, and the marriage relationship itself which, in order to thrive, should be cared for as a separate entity.

A couple of hallmarks of a good third place are things like: neutral setting, social leveler, playful conversations, regulars, low profile, and accessibility. Wellingtonians individually seem to value the third place because culturally it is encouraged as a source of enjoyment, and there is great social value in living in a place like that, we have found.

Before I sign off, here are the books I’ve read since arriving, all of which I’d recommend:

• Entangled Life: how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures (thanks for the recommendation Laura!), by Merlin Sheldrake

• The Hired Man, by Aminata Forna

• Creativity, a short and cheerful guide, by John Cleese

• The Flame Throwers, by Rachel Kushner