Does Fulfillment allways equal = Happiness?

To this answer you have to first question what is happiness.

Most would concide that happiness is generally a fleeting experience and not a constant.

How would you define true happiness?

Fulfillment, in my opinion, does lead to happiness. But...happiness is generally a fleeting emotion.



oh dear god I'm tired.....an hour and a half of sleep apparently isn't enough


Back to wha tI was talking about, since happiness is fleeting. Imagine it as a body of water...how about a bathtub, after the stopper is pulled.

There is still water in the tub, but it's going quickly. The only way to replinish the water is with new desires that are to be fullfilled.



I can't really tell if this makes sense right now, so if it doesn't....sorry

 

Dude, I just have to tell ya, I love yer Off Topic threads...


The other night I was thinking to myself that I hadn't seen any for a while.

 

I figure if I'm personally fulfilled, I'm probably happy in a long-term sense. However, if I'm happy, I'm not necessarily fulfilled.

 

I'm currently debating with myself over whether or not happiness and fulfillment are one and the same.


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One area of the subject that I may believe is this.

When I think of fulfillment, I believe I would consider it more or less an enlightened state.

True fulfillment would find oneself trancending emotion. Fore these emotions represent nothing more than the trials of life.

Finding true fulfillment, I suppose, would put one outside of these trials or give them a separate vantage point from which to gaze into these trials.

From this vantage point, one could see the flaws of happiness, despair, anger, apathy.....etc... Only then can one see whole truths. Truths unclouded by the haze of emotion.

Truth is beauty, beauty is truth. The masterpiece revels in it's simplicity.
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Hey man...Do the IMO dance ------->

 

Isn't it great that we can worry about things like being fulfilled and happy? Most animals (and even some people) have to worry about things like being eaten. But thanks to the marvels of modern society, we have so much time to get inside our own heads that we can completely disappear up our own butts.

Pffft to fulfillment and happiness. If I get out of this world without ruining the lives of people around me, that's all that's important. People who worry about making themselves happy and fulfilled almost never are, but they usually are pretty intolerable to be around.

 

Thank your lucky stars that we can conceive of such things. This is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom - the knowledge that we will die someday. It's what drives us to do things like consider whether or not we're happy or fulfilled.

In answer to the original question, does fulfillment always equal happiness, I'd have to say no. Happiness is a result of fulfillment, but I don't believe 100% fulfillment and happiness are possible in this world. Some get close, but the underlying notion that it can't go on forever, topped by the frosting of not knowing what lies beyond, always makes us pull up short.

There is a certain resignation (for lack of a better word) which really fulfilled people have that comes from the true realization that we may never know until we're gone, and that leads to contentment. I think that's where I am - content to know that, after years of searching, I'm never going to know. So I live in the here and now, content with what I have and looking forward to the day when I'll either find out what it's all about or disappear into nothingness, in which case it won't matter anyhow.

 

If you want to spin that around just bit, some people believe in finding fulfillment and happiness for themselves by taking your concept of "not ruining the lives of people around me" a step further to "improving and enriching the lives of the people around me."

Happiness is something that you can usually gain for yourself by giving it to someone else first.

IMO, IME, etc.

 

Obviously, you can't gain total happiness with partial fullfillment. Only partial happiness.
But then, total happiness is an utopic concept and therefore not achieveable.

 

Well, that and opposable thumbs, but that's for a different thread.

 

"unexamed life is not worth living"

Everything that chalanges us should make us happy there for fulfillment and failure a like should equal to happiness. We just have to lean to see it that way.

 

Something went wrong with your post ksg.

Fixed it for ya.

 

MMMMMMMM beer... I am sorry... I failed you all... thank you for correction

funny i dont remeber writing what i said in this thread but i do somewhat remeber arguing someone against that very same point in class this morning (after the post was made)...

 

Thats what I'm here for Kserg...


Thats what I'm here for.

 

But if you look at it that way, then you will definately never achieve it.

But I guess the whole thing hinges on whether your definition of fufilled is 'correct', i.e if you think winning the lottery will make you fufilled, and therefore happy, but it doesn't it's not because fufillment doesn't equal happiness, but because your idea of fufillment doesn't equal true fufillment. What is true fufillment? I reckon it's lovin' others before yourselfm

 

eh... I'm happy

 

I had a huge combination laksa with wantons for lunch and i'm fullfilled to the point of exploding.

 

They have other standard of what is happiness and what is fulfilment than us , for them to get money and food enough to feed themselves and their families is quite a happy thing to happen.

If it was constant then it wouldn't be happiness, just a regular rutine of life.
Life is like a sine wave ups and down (the depth is depends on the persona) Even the happiest man alive must have ups and downs to know he is happy.


I think....