Finding Fulfillment


by Ken Fields - Date: 2007-01-24 - Word Count: 457 Share This!

Here's the situation….You want. You want wealth. And health. You want comfort and peace; love and happiness. You want freedom. In a single all-inclusive word, you want FULFILLMENT.

Like most people, you probably think you are not fulfilled. You have too many unsatisfied needs and wants. But, that has nothing to do with fulfillment, that has to do with satisfaction. Fulfillment is something entirely different. Fulfillment is being full, complete, and whole. Satisfaction comes and goes with the waxing and waning of needs and wants. Fulfillment is not dependent on the satisfaction of needs and wants, it is based something much more basic, much more fundamental. Fulfillment is based on the very nature of being. Satisfaction is based on becoming. There is a huge difference between being and becoming.

Becoming is a process. The mind seeks to become more, have more, get more; to become bigger and better...Becoming is based in desire and it does not cease when any particular desire is satisfied because other desires arise. Being, on the other hand, is about the fullness of existence in the present. There is no desire, no becoming. You can become anything you want (or so we are often told). In our culture, there is a tremendous pressure to become someone, do something. Work hard. Struggle. Fight for it. Claw your way up to the top of the heap. Become! And we are told that by becoming we will achieve fulfillment. Unfortunately, from the top of the heap, we see another heap off in the distance; a bigger heap towards which we must strive if we are to become fulfilled. This is a never ending process which is why we will never become fulfilled. But, we can be fulfilled.

Whereas becoming is a process, being is a state. It is no so much static, although that word applies. However, synonyms such as unchanging, constant, invariable, unvarying, immobile, motionless, fixed and still are equally, and perhaps more, appropriate. Being underlies becoming in the same way the ocean underlies the surface waves. If becoming is like a wave on the ocean arising to a peak and then crashing on the shore, being is the ocean itself. The waves of satisfaction rise and fall while the ocean of fulfillment remains constant. Satisfaction is achieved through becoming while fulfillment is experienced through being. And, since you are a human being, you really don't need to do anything. You cannot become what you already are. And what you are now is far more wonderful, far more magnificent, than anything you could possibly become in the future. The moral of the story? Don't measure your fulfillment based on your becomings. Fulfillment exists in the present moment of your being human regardless of any doings on your part.


Related Tags: health, wealth, peace, happiness, needs, satisfaction, freedom, comfort, desires, being, fulfillment

Kenneth Fields is owner and principle counselor at Open Mind Counseling, http://www.openmindcounseling.com He is a nationally certified licensed mental health counselor with over 25 years of experience in working with individuals, couples, families and groups. He has been a crisis intervention counselor, has taught at university and has been an administrator in a human service agency. He has taught public classes in stress and anger management, mediation, communication and negotiation, self image psychology, motivation and goal setting and crisis prevention. Mr. Fields now offers online counseling and specializes in cognitive behavior and family systems therapy.

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