Dangermond.org

I’ve always been attracted to the cerebral types, the ones who seem to be able to retain vast knowledge and pull it all together into a cogent thought, but honestly I’m on another educational path these days. That of trying to simply be. This may sound easy enough but it’s hard. In order to be you have to believe in a few tenets such as 1) you are worthy of simply being and don’t have to produce or take care of or accomplish, 2) that in simply being the construct of the world you have created won’t crumble around you, and 3) just being is actually an achievable goal.

I was at a meeting last night and a woman was speaking to her recent experience of changing careers. Years working in the inner maw of the City of New Orleans and now suddenly she’s shifted to academe to which she says, “My toes aren’t curling about this job, yet, but it’s nice not to know every gory detail of what is going on in this city.” She said she had been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell recently, not page by page, but rather randomly dropping into his writings. One note that hit home for her was he said when you are confused about what to do in life take a step back and remember what it was you loved doing as a child for fun. I said, “Hair!” I loved doing hair, cutting my dolls’ hair, cutting the stuffed animals hair, just doing hair.

This morning while walking the dogs a friend joined me and confessed she was trying very hard to just be. Wow, I said, so am I. Tough, isn’t it? Yes, indeed.

I saw this quote by Joseph Campbell today and it resonated. You can never have too much Joseph Campbell in your life.

I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Joseph Campbell

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 at 10:03 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.