WHAT IF FULFILLMENT WAS NEVER A DESTINATION?
The reaching, the resting and learning to be okay in both
Hi dear ones,
I find that there are two stories humans think about fulfilment, and we usually believe only one of them at a time, and we usually believe it’s the only one there is.
No. ONE: fulfilment is out there
This is the story most of us grew up inside. Fulfilment is something you reach.
It lives one holiday away,
one relationship away,
one number in the bank away,
one renovation away.
You earn it and you arrive at it. There is a finish line and a version of you waiting on the other side who finally feels fulfilled.
But here is the thing. This story is not stupid.
It built cities,
it cures diseases,
it writes books,
raises kids
and crosses oceans.
The hunger to do, to build, to become, is real and its human and its most of the time beautiful. People who feel fulfilled by mastering a craft or showing up for their family or finishing the hard thing are not lying to themselves.
They tapped into something true.
The trap is not the wanting, the trap is the location. We put fulfilment in the future and then we move there to live, and the future keeps doing the one thing the future always does. It stays in front of us.
So, we hit the goal and feel the high for a moment and then the bar quietly slides forward and we are hungry again. Psychologists have a name for this. They call it the hedonic treadmill. You run, the scenery never changes and you mistake the running for progress.
So, this gives us drive, direction and the sweet satisfaction of having done a hard thing well. It also hands us a low background hum, of never quite enough.
Both are true and that’s the deal. 😊
No. TWO: Fulfilment is in here
The other story is older and quieter, and its the one I came to through yoga.
In the yogic path there is a word, Samtosha. Its one of the Niyama’s, the inner practices, and it means contentment. Not the shallow kind. Not the kind that depends on a good day. It points at something steadier. The idea is that fulfilment is not a thing you go and fetch. It’s a thing you stop blocking. Its already here, underneath the wanting and the practice is to notice it rather than to manufacture it.
When I first started practicing this path, I used to say I wanted to be the queen of Samtosha. I meant it as a goal, which is funny now, because contentment is the one thing you cannot really achieve. You can only allow it. You can only put down the argument you are having with your own life.
This is gorgeous. It says you are not broken and you don’t need the next thing to be okay. It says peace is available right now, in this ordinary moment, with this tea, in this body even with all the open loops. It loosens the grip.
It also has its own trap, by the way. Used lazily, the contentment story becomes an excuse to never grow, to call your comfort zone a spiritual victory, to spiritualize giving up. Contentment is not the same as resignation. One is full. The other is flat. They can look similar from the outside and they feel nothing alike from the inside.
Each moment is lived completely, and there is thus a sense of fulfilment and completeness.
- Alan Watts
So which side is true
Both. That’s the real answer and its the one we don’t really want, because its not simple. ☺️
