Womankind

US mythologist Joseph Campbell said and wrote a lot of things over the course of his life, but there was one sentence, in particular, that caught the attention of the US public back then and still today, and that statement is “follow your bliss”. Readers of Campbell’s books were forever captivated by his prompting to hear the call to your own adventure. “Where is your bliss station?” he questioned. “You have to try to find it.” To what is Campbell, a professor of literature and expert on mythology, referring when he prompts us to follow our bliss? Campbell studied at university in Europe, but he didn’t get a PhD. And when it was time to get a job, he didn’t get that either. Instead, he turned to what impelled him…

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It’s the one question that we’d all like to know the answer to, so we could just get on with it - the living part, that is. If we knew what the ‘good life’ entailed then we could shun the rest, and just concentrate on the important bits. But society has a tendency to derail us. We’re repeatedly told that the good life is about making loads of money, having a successful career and buying as much as we can possibly shovel into our houses and garages. Some are convinced that they need to be famous and get their name up in lights for the good life to kick in. It’s worth remembering that the phase of flight for the Kunanyia stephaniae butterfly lasts a mere 14 days, long enough…

Be childish, playful, remain curious about the world - these are the traits of a great person, believed German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. More than fame, wealth, and other such worldly achievements, Nietzsche commended the person who rediscovered their childish sense of wonder and curiosity. To become the child again is, for Nietzsche, the way to find your bliss. “It is bliss to paint flowers...” When Claire Basler was a child, her parents took her to a medieval palace in Avignon, Southern France, called the Palais des Papes. When her parents toured the many rooms of this palace, little did they know they were silently laying the foundations for their daughter’s future, paving a way that would, many years later, find her dangling high from makeshift scaffolding to paint forest scenes…

Consider a few of the things I did during the 24 hours before beginning to write this article. I watched an hour-long episode of a TV drama my friends had recommended, long after it became clear it wasn’t one for me. I spent 20 minutes replying by email to a sort-of-friend who, if I’m honest, doesn’t play a particularly important role in my life. And I wasted the usual hour or two on social media. I’ll stop there, because this list is exceedingly dull - which, in a way, is the point: I used my precious time in some notably half-hearted ways. And at the risk of giving offence, I’m willing to bet that you did too. Yet as multiple philosophers and other wise minds have noted, there’s something fascinating…

The life of artist Georgia O’Keeffe took a seminal turn when she travelled from New York City to Taos, New Mexico on a holiday with a friend in the summer of 1929. Already the toast of the town as a gifted and celebrated artist whose work demanded high prices, she was nevertheless feeling increasingly restless with having to spend every summer with her husband’s family in New York, an activity that encroached on her time to paint and filled it, instead, with the kind of familial pressure and expectation that would be recognisable to any modern woman. Her letters home to her art dealer husband, Alfred Stieglitz, must have sounded a warning to him that she had fallen in love with something wholly new and separate from him. They were…