When Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell what someone in a midlife crisis should do if they had lost their way, Campbell’s answer was deceptively simple:

“Follow your bliss, and if you follow your bliss, doors will open where there were no doors before.”

It is a phrase that has been quoted endlessly, often mistaken for a call to chase pleasure or excitement. But Campbell was pointing toward something far deeper — the kind of joy the Sanskrit word ananda evokes, a quiet, abiding sense of rightness that arises when we are in harmony with our true nature.

This bliss is not something we manufacture; it is already here, like the sun behind clouds. Most of the time, the mind is noisy — restless commentary, anxious planning, comparisons, compulsions. In that noise, bliss is not destroyed, only hidden.

When the mind grows still, even for a moment, the clouds part and the light is revealed. Campbell himself warned that if your “bliss” is just excitement or fun, you are on the wrong track; you must come down to a deep place in yourself, a place beyond the surface ripples of mood and circumstance.

I started reading Joseph Campbell after a chance whistle‑stop visit to Giza near Cairo. The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces are must‑reads.

Often, you realise your bliss not when you go after it, but when life seems to have thrown you out of the race entirely. You reach a dead end. You feel like a failure on all counts, and the thought of living feels heavier than the thought of dying.

And then, something happens deep inside. Something flips. You look straight into the eyes of what you had feared most, and instead of turning back, you step into it. You immerse yourself in the very thing you once resisted.

From that moment, public applause, acceptance, bank balance, readership, mindshare, likes and emojis — none of it matters anymore. You don’t want to be a groom in every wedding and a corpse in every funeral. Being anonymous is equal to being famous.

And strangely, after that turning and churning, even those dearest to you begin to align with your life in ways you could never have orchestrated.

My better half, Thara, told me when Fr. AMA asked me to join Kanzeon Zendo as his assistant, that a calling is different from a job, a career or a profession. When you are called by life, you go with it. And I did just that.

In our time, the idea of bliss has been reinterpreted in many ways. Some see it as living in alignment with one’s deepest values, others as the contentment that comes from mindfulness and presence. Neuroscience and positive psychology frame it as a trainable state, cultivated through meditation, gratitude, and compassion.

In a world of constant stimulation, bliss can also mean mental spaciousness — the relief of being free from endless distraction. For creatives and athletes, it can resemble the flow state, where self-consciousness drops away and time feels fluid.

Across these interpretations, the thread is the same: bliss is less about acquiring something new and more about uncovering what has always been here.

Campbell often reminded us that we all live within myths, whether we recognise them or not. Some myths confine us, keeping us circling in patterns that feel safe but small. Others guide us toward the deep place where bliss resides.

To follow your bliss is to follow the myth that is truly yours — the one that opens doors you never knew were there, not because the world has changed, but because you have. And when the noise quiets, you may find that the path was here all along, waiting for you to walk it.

As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote:

Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino, y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino sino estelas en la mar.

Wayfarer, your footprints are the only road, nothing else.
Wayfarer, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road, and when you look back
you see the path you will never travel again.
Wayfarer, there is no road; only a ship’s wake on the sea.