Zac D. (no_insight) wrote, @ 2004-06-11 13:08:00

Is fulfillment the right word? I can feel the emotion, but I have trouble finding the vocab
For most of my life I have wished for happiness (you know when you catch a dandelion or find an eyelash). Last night I thought about changing this pattern. I find myself wanting a sense of fulfillment, of completeness. I had always rationalized that happiness was the end product. "Happiness is the meaning of life." What else would you want? Anything else would just be a means to happiness. EG I want air to breathe. Yes, so that I may be alive to feel happiness. or I want to be a doctor. Yes, so that I may contribute to society, because that is what makes me happy.

My epiphany last night was that 'fulfillment' is a completely separate emotion from happiness. One may be fulfilled, but not happy (though fulfillment is still a positive emotion). I am also nagged by the feeling that "one should do the right thing". I find it pretty easy to know what I should do (at least most of the time). But the part of the brain that actually executes a plan is not working quite so well with me. I don't know about others but I'm pretty sure it is the same for most people. There must be a way to change this. But getting back to the topic...

I am beginning to wonder if the measure of one's life should not be the joy (or sorrow) that one feels at every instant of ones life summed up. (Even before I knew about calculus and integrals I had this idea that you have a "happy-o-meter" and when you die you take a look at it and your whole aim is to have your personal happy-o-meter be as high as possible). I have an idea that I think may overthrow this one. The measure of one's life should be that after one is dead you reflect back and see how happy you are with the life you lived. But why should the latter overthrow the former?

From what I know I still have to believe in the integral of happiness idea. I am only aware of exactly the current point in time. Because this is the only thing that I can be certain of the measure of one's life should probably be related to that. But (and this is only a theory to show that the other has some kind of legitimacy in some, perhaps fictional, perhaps not, world) what if after you die you are still conscious but losing the body can "do" no more, and so you just reflect on your life as you had lived it. And let's also say there's no reincarnation so this goes on forever. Well this could be heaven or hell depending on how you lived your life. You remember that time you got hit with a rock, it doesn't hurt now (since your dead) but you can still be happy or not with how you reacted. Did it knock you down to defeat, or did you get back up and 'do the right thing'? Climb that mountain, punch the kid who threw it, or whatever.

Well I must reflect more on this. I'm curious what ya'll think.

The meaning of life is a memory tempterrx 2004-06-11 18:52 (link)

blurty resurrected from dormancy. yipee. anyway, i like your view of the moment of passing. happiness as the culmination of all the memories of the life you've lived. I'll agree. it's like when you get together with all of your buddies that you haven't seen in forever and all you do is sit around for all hours of the night reminiscing about all the good times you've had. what feels better than that (emotionally). even the most amazing physical pleasures are ghosted in your memories, but the emotions that you feel at your favorite times in your personal history stick with you. in order to truly appreciate the physical pleasures you experienced before, you pretty much have to experience it again but a little bit better. you can remember how good you felt then, but doing so would just make you sad. on the other hand, you sit around with your friends talking about that time in highschool, or that time in college, or that time at the race tracks, or that time with etc etc etc... and everyone gets a smile on their faces. so i suppose physical happiness is the happiness of the present which is not the same as happiness of fulfillment. happiness through fulfillment is not a present happiness because fulfillment happens at some unknown point in the future. satisfaction can happen now, but anyone who's ever gotten a report card knows that satisfactory is still below par. satisfaction is for those who are willing to settle, which i suppose gaurantees you won't be happy... you'll only be content. if you wanna be happy you gotta get through plenty of crap so you can feel your achievements are well worth the stuff you went through for it. my compulsion to buy lots of crap comes from the satisfaction of thinking i can impress others with what i own. my happiness comes from helping people find a good time for free at my expense, not from having the largest collection of things. i'll be the first to take a gamble on my hard earned money to buy some game that may be new to everyone just to see if people will like it. i suppose that's why i take it personally when people don't like a game that i purchase because somehow i feel that they don't appreciate this thing that i've done for them, but i know that's a stupid thing to think. either way, that has no real relevence to the topic at hand... but whatever. don't worry. be happy. (Reply to this) (Thread)