Finding Fulfilment
What is fulfillment and how do we achieve it? From the day we are born, whether we know it or not, we are continually seeking the answer to these questions. For some people, fulfillment is called pleasure; some know it as accomplishment, triumph or contentment. Others know it as piece of mind or being at peace.
But what is fulfillment – this insubstantial and indefinable condition, this desire that we are burning to attain? Fulfillment is feeling whole, sated, full up, completed. It is absence of absence in our lives. We want for nothing.
Equally, if we do not experience this completeness, then this lack of fulfillment haunts us. We become distressed at the awareness that something important is lacking from our lives and we feel deficient. No one prepare us for this intangible dearth, this absence of an elusive presence. Rationally, we irrationally spend much of our time trying to capture or recapture this state.
We are compelled by an invisible need to sate this desire, to fill the emptiness that is left by its absence. We attempt to do this in so many fruitless ways. We leave our husband, buy the sports car, change jobs, eat the entire tub of ice cream or max out the credit card on new clothes. Each activity will provide satisfaction, but it will be short-lived, temporary, only filling our need for fulfillment, our craving for a very short time. When the buzz of the sugar rush leaves us, we crash, feeling more empty and guilty than before.
Under the pressure to fulfill this gnawing desire, we can behave out of character. We move from person to person, searching for a relationship with ‘the one’. It makes us cheat on our wife over and over, explore ‘open’ marriages, compels us to try to quench our thirst for fulfillment with a new sexual partner each week, seeking the elusive excitement of the beginning of a new relationship. What cause us to behave this way? The cause, our justification is often:
‘I did not feel fulfilled.’ or ‘I have needs and this person does not take care of them’. ‘You don’t do it for me any more’ or ‘we want different things from life’.
No, what you want is exactly the same; it just manifests itself in different ways.
But what did we expect? How self-centred we are to believe that another’s purpose is to make us feel replete.
But the hole in us, this bottomless void knows no sating because we are addicted to our desire for fulfillment and when we are not trying to gain it, we are unhappy too. Once we have performed these actions, these acts that we felt were so necessary to our happiness (no – our mental survival and stability) we quickly realize that we were wrong and very soon the urge for fulfillment surfaces again. But this time it takes on a new shape, an entirely new form. That’s why it’s so elusive, it never appears in the same guise twice.
Many of us attain the highest positions of employment, great personal and financial success through our job, only to realize that one’s career goal, our ambition, did not fulfill us, did not close the avoid. So, we think there is something wrong with us and we set off to find the next way to sate the insatiable urge, perhaps through gambling or drink or drugs or maybe a fresh challenge in a new job.
Often, people will say ‘I know that I would be really happy if only I could just get this or that particular job’. Exchange job for the word partner, house, holiday or some other longed for experience and we see the futility of the situation. Other people often say to me ‘I’ve no idea what to do in life’ – what they actually mean is, nothing that I have experienced has given me that fulfillment that I know OTHERS have achieved before. But of course, they are wrong, especially about the others.
Should we give up our dreams, our desires? Should we stop wanting entirely and just be happy with our lot? Not at all. We are improved and developed by the challenges in our lives. But the job itself will not, cannot make us complete. We can feel the temporary buzz of success, we can enjoy basking in the sweet glow of victory, but this soon turns bitter as the feeling of fulfillment ebbs away.
When I was young, I went backpacking in Australia. I met many people, experienced all kinds of new things and wholly enjoyed exploring this new country. I learned a great deal, connected with people, visited amazing places and that really made me feel good about myself and excited. One day, I sat by myself on a rock on an island looking out over the warm, calm ocean. The sun was drifting downwards and the shadow of a bird of prey soared overheard. I looked at all of this, I breathed in, I literally became inspired by the sea, the heat, the smells of the forest behind me and I thought to myself ‘This is the crowning moment of my life so far. I am so lucky, it is wonderful beyond compare, if only!’ Even the dramatic magnificence, the sensorial splendor of this moment in a place thousands of miles from home could not make me feel complete, it could not fulfill me.
Did you ever experience the sense that although you were happy, something was missing? Imagine if you will, a plastic container that has been punctured in some way, so that it has a hole in it. You pour water into the container, but it just leaks away. The container cannot possibly keep the water. You can keep trying to fill the container over and over again but unless you fix the hole, it’s going to just keep pouring out. Fulfillment is exactly the same.
There is a more dangerous and harmful search for fulfillment. We call this a vice or a sin. People gorge themselves on food, they use porn, wager their money, abuse alcohol, sleep with prostitutes, sleep with strangers, overspend or indulge in illicit substances. They are ancient issues, they are not contemporary, they have been with us forever, because their cause has been with us forever. However, we lose our grip on them and they have us in their grip, they are abused to plug our endless desire, our present absence.
All of these sensational pleasures, these apparent satisfactions cannot keep the hunger away. They become addictions and they becoming harmful. The excitement of the casino fades, leaving us with unpaid bills. Pornography leaves us disconnected from real love. The quick temporary thrill causes these extreme measures to become compulsive. But inside, we experience emptiness, we try to fill it with these powerful pleasures and it does indeed work for a while, but then the emptiness begins to creep back in and we must indulge again in our harmful attempts at completeness, each time more extreme. We do not overeat or over-drink to feed ourselves, we do it to satisfy our ancient craving, and of course, it does not work beyond the sensory thrill.
If all this is true, I know that you are wondering: how is fulfillment possible? How can I become happy and sated? The solution is unexpected. For you to feel fulfilled, you must take the focus off of yourself and place it on others. That is not to say look to others for your happiness. As we have discussed, another person will never provide this for us in the long run. To feel full, to feel that you have everything, you must give something of yourself to others.
The path to feeling true fulfillment is removing the selfish fixation with yourself and start paying attention to the needs of others. To act unselfishly fills us like no selfish act can. For this to work, we need to do something for someone else’s happiness. The fixation and fascination with self, the primal selfish urge is not easily tamed, but by facing this challenge with the goal of improving someone else’s lot, we lose our self-centredness and become replete.
Does this mean give money to charity or helping out in a homeless shelter? Perhaps. That’s a nice idea, a good place to begin but it’s likely to be temporary. Couldn’t anyone give away money to the poor or unfortunate? To buy the homeless girl a warmer coat, to go to the shop and purchase it yourself, to battle with the issue of size, colour, warmth, all on her behalf, this requires that you give up your previous time and it takes real compassion, thoughtfulness and the selflessness to act with another’s benefit in your heart and mind.
We are goal-oriented. We want to know how to know what actions to take. Which particular unselfish acts will produce the best results? That’s the great challenge of achieving fulfillment, you won’t know it until you feel the absence of absence and even then how does one become aware of lack of nothing? It is not a conscious experience; you feel it long before you are aware of it. In fact, when you feel it, you will not even be concerned with knowing it. You will be full, and when we are full we do not contemplate filling. To find fulfillment, true fulfillment, we must stop looking to ourselves, to our own needs and see its possibility in everyone else around us.
Not my usual, but I hope you enjoyed it.