Sometimes when I walk, my feet are ballpoints and the path a sheet of blank page where I bleed my footprints.
what do you think makes for a fulfilling life?
is a fulfilling life even achievable or is it a myth?
Hello Jesa,
Sorry for sending my response to your questions just now. I know that my answers to these questions could affect how you navigate your life at this challenging juncture, so I wanted to make sure I approach them carefully.
For me, these questions are highly subjective. Psychology (and sometimes philosophy) loves to come up with generalized answers to these questions. For example, the literature in positive psychology has grown in recent years and has now exhaustive answers to these questions. Meanwhile, the recent resurgence of stoicism and other Greek philosophies about the good life are indicative of a world looking for ready-made answers. I enjoy reading some of these stuff, and I honestly believe they can sometimes be helpful. But with the proliferation of such materials, it is easy to forget that the question of what makes “your” life fulfilled can only truly be answered by “you.” So, I think it is more important to prioritize listening to the answers you can find within your own mind and body.
Listening to what your mind and body is telling you can be difficult due to the many distractions of modern life. Plus there’s the added issue of resistance: you might be able to hear what you mind and body is telling you but will you accept the answers you find? Will you be open to surprising and sometimes difficult truth you will discover? Unfortunately, you will never know until you try deep listening and acceptance.
I swear that the single biggest thing that helped me listen to myself was my meditation practice. I never knew about meditation until after I left the JWs. I was never really taught to listen to myself growing up. When I discovered I can listen to myself through meditation, I was really surprised of how immediately powerful it was. The first thing it made me realize was how cluttered my mind could be and how the majority of my thoughts are really out of my control. They just come whenever they want from who knows where. But as I continued with my practice, I noticed I became more forgiving of my thoughts, more accepting of them, and more open to all of them, even the most surprising ones. This learned opennes helped me be less attached to my thoughts and the emotions that usually accompany them. Although I can now see that I may need to explore it soon, I never had therapy. Meditation sort of became this thing that got me through.
So, if you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend exploring this. It’s a perfect partner to your writing practice. Meditation enriches everything that you do, including your general outlook of life.
To answer your second question directly, I do believe that a fulfilling life is achievable. I’ve met enough people who are fulfilled with their lives (in real life and in books) and even fortunate to know some of them personally that it would be absurd for me not to believe life can indeed be fulfilling. I think if we take a closer look, we would find many others who have lived or are living a life of fulfillment.
I think whether you achieve fulfillment in life hugely depends on how you define fulfillment and how high or low your standards are for achieving it. My mom’s definition of fulfillment is “no more diabetes,” a day with her dog, seeing her apos at least once a month, having some cash to buy new ukay-ukay, and hanging out with her church friends. She’ll be 60 in a few years but she has never set foot on a plane. I can’t sense any desire from her to see more of the world outside Pangasinan and yet she is one of the most fulfilled people I know.
I have a friend whose sole purpose in life, according to him, is to become the greatest father ever. While he is yet to have a child, what gives him fulfillment now is watching reaction videos on Patreon in between his subtitling work, which pays the bills but is far from being a career. He is one of the most unambitious people I know, but when I’m with him I can’t sense that he is lacking anything. Although I don’t think I’ll be fulfilled with his lifestyle, I actually find myself envying his carefreeness sometimes.
Meanwhile, I’m an idealist who wants to see a better world, a world full of diverse people who are compassionate to each despite their differences. As hinted by my recent essay, I want a world where people are free become who they want to be and yet still care about each other, society, and nature. I see my writing moving forward as sort of a secular “ministry” in service to this aspiration. I would feel very fulfilled if after all my work I would live in such a world before I die. But I’m turning 31 already and there’s a big possibility that I would die not seeing this world. This standard of fulfillment is too high that if I make it my only standard for fulfillment I will never be fulfilled.
I now know that fulfillment is easier to get if we look for it in the simple things in life even as we pursue our biggest and most idealistic aspirations. Humanistic psychologists differentiate peak experiences from plateau experiences. Peak experiences are the highest of highs, the big wins that are often coupled with strong ecstatic emotions. While they are extremely pleasurable, they are very rare and they tend to be fleeting. On the other hand, plateau experiences are simple, pleasant experiences that often bring milder but still pleasurable emotions. While less pleasurable than peak experiences, plateau experiences happen more frequently and, therefore, is more accessible. The positive emotions attached to them also tend to last longer.
Here’s the lesson: If you rely only on big wins (peak experiences) for fulfillment, you won’t be able to sustain this fulfillment. If you want to last long in this wilderness of life, you have to find sustenance from a resource that is plentier and more accessible. That resource are plateau experiences. And the mindfulness you develop from practicing meditation will help you notice more of these plateau experiences. They’re all around you.
In my every day life here in LB, these are some of my daily plateau experiences:
- hugging my cats
- a brief exchange with the vendor I’m buying vegetables from
- watching a swaying leaf outside my window
- reading a good book
I’m sure you have your own good share of these plateau experiences in your own life. The key is to elevate them more and make them the source of your strength.
This is what I’m proposing with “subsistent spirituality.”
And so while I still consider myself idealistic (I still do my best to pursue this ideal world I want to live in and I am fully committed to this endeavor), I’ve learned to combine this idealism with a similar passion for the little “blessings” I have every day.
So, our ideals become the compass that tells us where to go, but it is the little plateau experiences that sustains us during the journey.
It would be really fulfilling to achieve our ideals and experience them while we live. But it is wise to treat them as the icing to our cake rather than the cake itself. It is better to treat the realization of our deepest dreams as just an affirmation of what we’ve known all along from the many tiny goodness we experience every day—that life is good despite all its flaws.
I realize that my answers here sound more abstract and less practical, so I want to keep this an open conversation between the two of us. I open questions from you and if you need a more practical answer that might target a specific area of your life, please do let me know.
For now, I’ll end this already very long answer with an excerpt from Steven E. Webb’s essay “Presence, Memory, and Faith.” Here, Webb uses the metaphor of fishing to elucidate the things I explained above:
Fishing stands for the life of faith, and the leaping fish stands for those exclamatory experiences—perceptual, mnemonic, or both—that may supervene upon that life. Apart from our active commitment to what the river may bestow, we would never cast our lines and the fish would never leap. This does not mean that the fish must leap. We can’t control their presence, and if we seek for control we shall reduce our lives to continual frustration. Faith, like fishing, has the somewhat oxymoronic character of active waiting—of keeping oneself open to whatever may come. Thus wanting a saving experience at the end of one’s days not only indicates an unwholesome fixation on something one can’t finally possess, but is quite beside the point. The issue is not the availability or durability of such experiences as isolated moments, but rather what they confirm, if and when they do occur, about the “omnirelevant truth”—affirmed and kept in faith—that our world is a holy place, that things are worthy of love, and that our life together with them is affirmable even in our moments of obscurity, and even as we perish. When we are sensitized by faith, reality alls upon us with myriad voices: in works of art, gestures of kindness, the leap of fish, and the remembrance of things past.
Such a passion to the little things will later develop gratitude.
I currently have two disabilities. I am mentally disabled by the residues of my depression and I have lost more than half of my hearing in my left ear. Both losses have lead to great grief. But after the grief subsided, I was left with this weird sense of gratefulness. I think we who have lost something are blessed with this gratefulness for the things that remain. So, like, everytime I walk I feel really grateful for my legs and feet. I write three things I’m grateful for every morning when I wake up. Among my many habits, this one has really stuck the most.
I also learned radical acceptance: acceptance that while I could express dismay for things I can’t control, my efforts are better devoted to the things I can. Because I need to feel change and the only way I can feel it is for me to work on things I can control.
Without putting the majority of my attention to the little things in life, to things I can control, I know I’ll just be leading myself to
While I am still idealistic, I learned through the years to take care of my peace of mind. Without it: depression then suicide nanaman. I am useless dead. In short I have to learn how to take care of my mind to survive. To do that, I need to learn radical acceptance: acceptance that while I could express dismay for things I can’t control, my efforts are better devoted to things I can. For example, I can express dismay of capitalism and of all the ills of the world, but I have learned to accept that there’s a bit possibility I will die without seeing the world I dream of. I have made peace with this and focus instead on what I can control: my health, my relationships, and my art.
Money
- Fulfillment curve in terms of money
- I learned that the more money I made the more magastos I became
- When I lost my job last year, I was forced to be very matipid.
- I realized that I could live pretty well while only spending around 20k per month. If I go home to the province I could even lessen this.
- It’s amazing how much poverty one can tolerate.
Mental health
- Peak moments vs plateau experiences
- Most of us see the highest highs: big wins. Interestingly, even in spiritual circles, like having a transcendental experience, is prized more
- no one is paying attention to the plateau expriences
- The more I get old the more I make peace na hindi parating masaya. As long as may peace of mind ako, ok lang.
- Fishing (waiting vs catching the fish)
- Aspire for mild not wild success (Nicholas Taleb)
I dont know about your level of ambition. Pero I have a moderate approach to ambition eh. For an ambitious go getter, these words would mean very less.
Anecdote on contentment
Importance of articulting a stop gap, of enough. Ur body will tell this but what if ir mind continues to want. At some point u must confront your enough point.