Introspective Wednesday: Joseph Campbell

The other day, I was sitting next to a fireplace in a mahogany chair, reading a very heavy and important book filled with big words and lofty ideas when I came across this quote*:

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you." - Joseph Campbell

I gotta say,  that Joey knows his STUFF.

I am indeed the ultimate planner - I found my notebook from probably the first few years of high school and I had mapped out, hour-by-hour, my summer vacation. (9am-11am: volunteer at camp. 11am-12pm: lunch. 12pm-1pm: Study for the SATs. 1pm-2:15pm: Break. 2:15-3:00pm: Practice violin. And so on. I am the COOLEST!).

So it's a little unsettling for me to be in such an unplanned place. I have always had the next step: high school to college. College to grad school. Then grad school to job... right?

Well, I stepped off that just a little bit by choosing a job that was only temporary and then deciding not to actively seek employment when it ends. Not just yet. God only knows the life that is waiting for me, but my job - my employment - is to find it.

While tooling around on the interwebs to try to figure out if the above quote came from a book, I came across a whole mess of Campbell quotes that I think are just fantastic:

"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 are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

"If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path."

"If you are falling... dive."

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."

*I know I probably tricked you, but I didn't ACTUALLY get this quote from reading it in some impressive book. It was on Pretty Little Liars. But that show has gotten super edgy recently.


FORGOT CAT PHOTO AGAIN! Here is one Dad sent me today.