You are here: Home / Archives for fulfillment

Gray Hair and Silver Linings

November 9, 2014 by 19 Comments

long grey hair, woman

70 is the new 60.
60 is the new 50.
50 is the new 40.

Right.

These two NY Times Op-Ed pieces are beautifully written where ever you land with your math. I’ve chosen 2 excerpts. Be sure to click through to the full stories.

Frank Bruni turns 50 and writes Gray Hair and Silver Linings:

[…] There’s a point at which you have to accept that certain hopes and dreams won’t be realized, and 50 sure feels like it. I mean the lost margin for error. When you’re in your 20s and even your 30s, you can waste months, squander love, say yes to all the wrong things and no to all the right ones. And you can still recover, because there are many more months and loves and crossroads to come. The mistakes of youth are an education. The mistakes later on are just a shame. And I mean the lost people most of all: the ones from whom you’re separated by unmovable circumstances; the ones who’ve died. By 50 you start to see the pace of these disappearances accelerating. It’s haunting, and even harrowing. But there’s something else that you start to notice, something that muffles all of that, a muscle that grows stronger, not weaker. More than before, you’re able to find the good in the bad. You start to master perspective, realizing that with a shift in it — an adjustment of attitude, a reorientation of expectations — what’s bothersome can evaporate and what only seems to be urgent really isn’t…

Emily Fox Gordon, 66, with The Meaning of Fulfillment:

AT 66, I find myself feeling fulfilled. I didn’t expect this, and don’t know quite what to make of it…Fulfillment is a dubious gift because you receive it only when you’re approaching the end. You can’t consider your life fulfilled until you’re fairly sure of its temporal shape, and you can’t get a view of that until you’re well past its midpoint  […]  At any rate, by now I’ve racked up enough achievements that I feel I can stop trying. Paradoxically, of course, I find I don’t want to stop. Now that not much is at stake, I’m more ambitious than ever, or at least more conscious of my ambition. Liberated from an anxiety I’ve struggled to suppress, I feel a new energy. What is fulfillment made of? Mostly relief…

Image Source: imgarcade

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do what you love? Or do what most needs doing?

May 20, 2014 by 30 Comments

work,passion,career,art,writing

A 2012 share titled “Do What You Love” garnered more likes (393) and more views (8,396) than any other post on this blog. My thinking has evolved (you were naive!) since that time with a subsequent share titled: Do What You Love? Wrong! and this NY Times article by Professor Gordon Marino titled Life Beyond ‘Do What You Love’:

…But is “do what you love” wisdom or malarkey?

…the “do what you love” ethos so ubiquitous in our culture is in fact elitist because it degrades work that is not done from love. It also ignores the idea that work itself possesses an inherent value, and most importantly, severs the traditional connection between work, talent and duty.

…My father didn’t do what he loved. He labored at a job he detested so that he could send his children to college. Was he just unenlightened and mistaken to put the well-being of others above his own personal interests? It might be argued that his idea of self-fulfillment was taking care of his family, but again, like so many other less than fortunate ones, he hated his work but gritted his teeth and did it well.

…Our desires should not be the ultimate arbiters of vocation. Sometimes we should do what we hate, or what most needs doing, and do it as best we can.

Read full article: Life Beyond ‘Do What You Love’

Image Source: daiquiri-kisses (modified)

Filed Under: Business, Grow, Lead, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It is simply the chattering of the fallen mind

January 30, 2014 by 21 Comments

painting, art,woman,portrait, close-up

Today we have more time to dwell on our problems than our ancestors ever did. Our free time is dominated by a hundred and one distractions. Thus, when we do get a free moment, the thoughts in our heads think that nothing is happening and want to move quickly to something more pressing. This leaves us with a feeling of “lack of fulfillment” which some people actually mistake for life itself, when in fact it is simply the chattering of the fallen mind. It is not more life itself than the exhaust of a bus is the bus itself.

~Archimandrite Meletios Webber

References/Credits:

Filed Under: Art, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aching, aching, aching

January 8, 2014 by 26 Comments

man, face,portrait,black and white, close-up,stare

There is within me a thing that is aching, aching, aching always as the days pass.

—Mary MacLane

Credits: Poem – Sleepwalking.nu from Mary MacLane’s book , “I Await The Devil’s Coming”. Photograph: Bill Moore

Filed Under: Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I actually attack the concept of happiness…

July 17, 2012 by 23 Comments

umbrella in storm“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that – I don’t mind people being happy – but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position – it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

~ Hugh Mackay

This quote was inspired (and not in a positive way) by my recent readings of an shockingly large number of children and adults being medicated for a variety of reasons ranging from serious disorders like chronic depression to anxiety, ADD and academic performance.   Sad and disturbing. (This coming from a man who can barely choke down a Bayer aspirin without feeling guilt wash over me.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Art, Business, Inspire, Lead, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
%d bloggers like this: