fulfillment

A good friend and I were having a conversation recently about life and he used the word "fulfillment". I tossed that word around for days afterwards...thinking about the role that fulfillment has in our lives. There are so many different aspects to one's life...areas that matter, that affect our well being, that help us determine whether or not we are living the best version of our life: our work, our relationships, our children, our health, our hobbies, our financial stability, our faith and so on. In each of those areas we have a set of ideals, of expectations, of how we want that part of our life to be...what we need it to be in order to feel fulfilled.

I look around me and I see, more often than I would have expected, that people use the fulfillment they may be getting from one aspect of their life to make up for a lack of it in another. The fulfillment from having children makes up for the void left by a mediocre marriage. Or financial stability makes up for the monotony of a job that one has no passion for. Can one strive for fulfillment in every area of their life?

Finding fulfillment is hard, hard work. Things that are worth doing are usually hard. Sophie taught me about what true fulfillment really feels like....I had never really experienced that until she came into my life. I have written before that I had never felt as proud or as accomplished than when people would comment on how well we worked together or how well trained she was. Once you taste that kind of joy, you begin to seek it out in other areas of your life. But that kind of fulfillment does not come easy....it is a journey, and it is usually found by making tough decisions, by having courage, by having perseverance. I have found more fulfillment in the last year than I have known in my lifetime...but I have a long way to go still. I guarantee you will know two things for sure on your journey to fulfillment:

One....you will know when you have found it, because it will feel like your soul has grown wings.

And two...you will know that it was worth every second of that journey.

So is it possible to find fulfillment in every aspect of your life.? My answer is I don't know...but I intend to spend most of my time on this earth trying to find out.