“Finding My Bliss Means...”

In her introduction to “Bliss: Writing to Find Your True Self” – my latest topical treat from Powell's bookstore – Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. (I append the letters with mock gravitas that fails to mask my bit of bitterness) says, “Bliss is the natural direction we should take, the perfect work for us because it inspires maximum creativity and performance.” She also acknowledges that it's not always easy to figure out just what our bliss might be, because “finding your bliss means being clear, becoming motivated, staying committed and listening to your inner sense of direction.”

To my jaded inner ear, her writing sounds...well, pedestrian, not given to flights of fancy, but since she claims that the writing exercises in her book are “key” for readers hoping to find their bliss, I've decided to indulge her (and myself). Sometimes it's important to give someone the benefit of the doubt.

So, her first exercise asks the reader to finish this thought: Finding my bliss means...

Here's what I came up with, more or less – and just FYI, I spent at least three solid hours on this, so wrapped up in writing (and ripping out pages, and rewriting) that I completely forgot to eat lunch:

Finding my bliss means exploring not just mountaintops and tidepools, but also the vacant lots and leafy interiors of the soul. It means gathering all my favorite weeds and turning them into words: dandelions and crimson clover, yarrow and vetch, miner's lettuce and cowslips. It means sewing stories from star thistles, weaving the unlikely magic of metaphor.

Finding my bliss means letting myself be the painstaking work in progress, the shirt forever short a sleeve, the swan never completely transformed. It means making time and staying with my task, though nettles burn my fingers and duty sometimes strikes me dumb.

Finding my bliss means that when my brothers and sisters wing their way toward me across the evening sky, I will recognize them as human, and have a present ready for every one. It means learning how to create costumes that can break spells, revealing the true forms of those who try them on.

And finding my bliss means being satisfied with these minor miracles, accepting the grace of “good enough.”