The first person to articulate to me that they had an issue with the word "blissmonger" laid that on me yesterday. I suppose there have been others who may react negatively to the term and have kept their opinion to themselves, but this person didn't.
They thought I should drop it immediately and choose something else. Negative connotation, unclear message, etc., etc.
So that's fine, they can have their opinion. I don't have to act on it or take it in any further than to acknowledge how different their filters are from mine.
Unfortunately, somewhere in the
sixteenth century something happened, whereupon usage of the term
“monger” fell into disrepute and fueled the coining of the likes of
fearmongering, hatemongering, etc.
To me, blissmongering is a term that combines the best of Joseph
Campbell’s advice in what to follow in your life’s journey and a positive spin on the flavor of persistence attached to the meaning of mongering.
The terms bliss, happiness, joy, contentment–-they
all have acquired a bad rap as well, lumped together under a Pollyanna banner of
impracticality and naivete.
I think it's interesting that the pursuit of happiness is extolled as an inalienable right in our nation's constitution, but our culture's morays have progressed to such a state that you're considered a tad wacked if you do, indeed, pursue it.
I simply am reclaiming the words, which is how language works: it is
fluid, flexible, ever-changing, and reflects the practices of the
people who use it.
I choose to employ the term blissmongering to encompass the conscious
positive response to life’s unfolding which has well-documented social,
psychological, physiological and spiritual benefits to the
practice, which our forefathers understood way back when.
I’ve noticed that what passes for modern "fixes" to society’s ills do
not even remotely have the same track record. Check out the industries and
institutions that have grown up around the problems we as a planet are
supposedly dedicated to solving.
Have they garnered great results in their outlays of time, energy and cash? Not so much.
Dismal at best, entrenched in “this is how we do things” at worst, as far as I can see.
I used to think that industries and institutions needed to change/be
forced to change before the world could be a better place.
Not so
anymore.
As Margaret Mead so aptly phrased it, “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
It’s the people who live and work inside institutions, who populate
a culture, who can hold the space for a different end result-–their
critical mass creates a tipping point that makes the change.
Blissmongers are those people.
We’ve noticed that what’s been presented as best practices in health
care, education, business, foreign and domestic policy aren’t working,
and rather than debate and belabor that current thinking, we’re prepared to
focus elsewhere for the solutions.
It’s not that we don’t know what to do. There are millions of people on the planet practicing other ways of doing things that do work. Beliefs about those other ways just haven’t caught up yet to that real-world knowing.
To be a blissmonger means to choose to thrive, in spite of all the
“evidence” on the planet to the contrary, in spite of the -isms that
plague us as a civilization. It means to follow your bliss, do what is
important to you, what won’t let you sleep until you’ve done it, to
monger your joy and contentment with the knowing that to live otherwise
just doesn’t make any sense.
You know what happens when you calmly and consistently refuse to invest any energy into a toddler's tantrums? They disappear, because they don't produce the desired result.
If we treated the woes of the world like the tantrums, great and small, of unmatured minds and hearts that they are, and focus elsewhere--what would that "mean"?
It would mean dropping the story that paying attention to what’s wrong is going to change anything.
It would mean paying attention to what’s right can change everything.
Blissmongering.
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