Follow Your Bliss

Pick a mentor past, present, or future. Who would that be and why?

That one's pretty easy for me because when I was just starting City Year I was reading the power of myth by Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell who died just around the time we were starting sitting so I never had a chance to meet him he was a professor of world mythology he studied every conceivable myth which is and what are myths but the wisdom of the world and I think he was able to synthesize this wisdom and he talked about the hero's journey and the power of myth and I was rereading and you know over and over again his stories and his understandings as I was thinking about whether I should do sort of a more traditional career path or step off it felt a little bit like running away to join the circus because this is thirty years ago there was no real sense of being a social entrepreneur of doing something sort of off the beaten path like this social enterprise he wanted to start called City Year and I was reading Joseph Campbell and he had this famous phrase. He said follow your bliss.

He said if you follow your bliss, your bliss will follow you and you will always have your bliss and it was really powerful and in fact something else he talked about too he said that if you really want to really achieve your dreams you're gonna have to slay your own dragons and that everybody's got some kind of dragon which is his way of saying something that's holding you back yes and so I really feel like those kinds of ideas even though I never met him I feel like he mentored me and really a whole generation of people that have read him but if I could go back now and take all the things that we're dealing about the city or and say Joe what should we be doing on this what does the power of myth say about these journeys that were on that would be extraordinary.

His, I mean he's one of the deepest thinkers ride of the modern era, so philosophical so deep and he kind of has that gift of taking something very complicated and making it simple, you know.