Billions and billions of years of human lives have been dedicated to it. Every man seeks fulfillment. Fulfillment is maybe the reason man has not yet committed suicide. Fulfillment is perhaps the reason man does not know peace. He hopes for fulfillment. He desires it. Everything he does is to be fulfilled.
What is it exactly? Does it exist? What is the thing that is fulfilled? For most of us, fulfillment is a point on the horizon. One day, we will get it. It is hope for a resolution of human misery. But in our mind this resolution, this hope are vague and never examined. Fulfillment is an idea that man has. "One day I will be fulfilled and it will be all worth it." Fulfillment is an idea that can justify or explain anything. But what reality the idea of fulfillment really has?
There is the idea of a higher self that needs to be realized. And fulfillment will be the reward for such realisation. Fulfillment is an arrival. It is a point in time when my problems will be forever resolved. It is in our mind heaven on Earth. The ultimate arrival. One is forced to notice that these are all ideas, which we have never experienced.
Fulfillment is an ideal, a myth, a point on the horizon that remains vague, undefined, and supposedly dependent on the person. Fulfillment is supposedly reached by different means: vocation, ideal, virtue, love. Fulfillment is a reward where the constant misery of man has ceased. It is life's purpose to reach such human nirvana. In the absence of such heaven of earth, man settles for seeking pleasure of all kinds.
And when man seeks fulfillment, they do not know what they seek. We do not question whether fulfillment is possible or real. Yet our whole life is aimed to achieve it.
Why does a man need fulfillment? He wants to become something. He wants continuity. He needs to continuously make sense of life. So he invents the ideal of fulfillment that makes sense of life. He invents a point far, far away in time that will give him what he desires. A point in the future that justifies his current state of sorrow and hard work. He does not know what else to do but hard work. And because to waste a life is a terrible thing, man has an ideal. Fulfillment is an ideal.
An ideal that proclaims a future resolution will be our reward also silently states that living is not enough. It says that man as he is, is not complete. The basis of fulfillment is that something is missing to man. What is exactly missing? And man must fill this gap so that he may be resolved, so that he may be fulfilled. And so he has a good reason for strife, hard work, and effort which give man something to do. An ideal is always in relationship with the future. An ideal is always a point on the horizon. By nature, as we look and wait for the horizon, how could not discount what is life here and now. An ideal demands a postponement. Ideal trades now for tomorrow.
Is there a higher self to be fulfilled? What possibly is standing between this higher self and its immediate fulfillment? Can we answer precisely to the question what is missing to be fulfilled? Are these ideas not extremely vague and undefined? Like a thick mist coming from our mind? Are they not the consequence of fear and confusion? Do we need maybe an escape from what is? Can escapes free men? So fulfillment is an idea that intends to solve the problem of man's gaping hole within him. Instead of examining this existential hole within, he looks at fiction, he looks at ideas, he wonders how can he be fulfilled.
Without the escapes to avoid examining this existential hole we feel within us, would we come up with the idea of fulfillment? What is this hole? We feel it, we look at it. Especially when we are unhappy, depressed, or frustrated, this is when we are in pain to not be fulfilled. If this gap within us could speak, it would probably say: "There is more to life than this. This cannot be life." And so this gap is a center of recognition. Which is another form of the self that demands more from life. In demanding more it says: "It's not enough!". Do we know what life is to be so convinced it is not enough?
One examines this demand: "If it is not enough, what is missing?" And the gap may respond: "I don't know! It simply is not enough!" And for decades we live with this belief that it is not enough. Like a child with totally unreasonable demands because he lacks hours of sleep.
Could it be that we don't know life, so we ask for more? Could it be that this life of ours that constantly demands for more has made our heart empty and our mind dull? Could it be that our life of automatons made us blind? Can there be a demand for fulfillment without the self?