What Is The Best Way To Live A Fulfilling Life?

It is pointless to ask what the ideal way of living is. The topic is so broad and nebulous, and people’s experiences are so different that any answer to the question would only be a product of a personal opinion or experience. But maybe a more interesting question is: to have a content and happy life, but one that continuously provides motivation and meaning, do we need to be in a perpetual struggle, or give and take between happiness/contentedness and struggle/challenge? 

On one hand, we want to be attain happiness, that is meet our goals, have a fruitful, prosperous life, and naturally want to avoid or get through hardships, challenges, and suffering. Yet if we ever do get to a point where we have accomplished everything we want to accomplish, and are, for lack of a better term, “ indefinitely prosperous,” and never have to worry about the next challenge, will we lose our drive, our motivation, and our meaning?

What I mean by “indefinitely prosperous” can be described as being certain that one can overcome any challenge that is put forward. It means that future hardship and suffering will not occur. You have faced your goals and challenges, and overcome them. Now you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor for the rest of your life.

One of the things about life is that we constantly face challenges that we are not sure we can overcome. Naturally, this is something that we view as a negative. But if we became so rich, skilled, insightful, or virtuous that we got to a point in which there was no challenge left to get through, or there was never any doubt that a challenge in life would be overcome, would we get bored or lose the meaning we saw in life?

If when you wake up, you are not thinking about how you can provide for yourself and/or the people you care about, or about a job, relationship, sports team, attaining more knowledge, or helping society, or anything that requires proactively doing something, what do you find value in? 

Saying that “we will always have something we want to do or a challenge we must overcome, or a thing in society we want to change for the better” is a representation of not being “indefinitely prosperous” and having a challenge we want to overcome.

The point of this question is to ask whether we require the thing that we inherently do not like: a challenge/problem that we are not certain we will overcome. We all want to get to the point where we can say “I did this to help my family or others,” “I did this to help the world,” “I got through this challenge,” “I accomplished what I want to in my life,” but then life still goes on, and we need to keep doing things, however small and innocuous.

Would that mean that there’s no such thing as being fully content with your life, to the extent that fully content means that there is nothing more you want to improve or add? If that is the case, then it would enforce the idea to follow your passion, but relish the journey just as much as the actual accomplishment.

It might be that the answer to the question of “boredom or suffering?” is “the right perspective.” The intrinsic reality of our existence as humans generally is having challenges and difficult events interposed between long periods of calm or boredom.

There is no escaping this. The best thing to do is accept this fact of life, and craft it into something that gives you meaning and joy. Do not burn yourself out. But don’t lose all interest and passion either. Find something that you’re aiming for. That way, you can go through the daily grind with a guiding light that you’re getting closer to. But you must gain fulfillment on the journey, not just the destination.

There is no universal, catch all answer to this question. The answer will never be black and white in this complex, nuanced world. Balance will always be the best chance at answering these age old questions and having a fulfilling life.