The Truth About Fulfillment

Why purpose must precede feeling, and why love may be the only end worth living for.

The Last Judgement (1425) - Fra Angelico

The Nature of Fulfillment

Just as a tree is a tree for all of humanity, happiness is happiness, and sadness is sadness. One person may enjoy the sight of a tree, another may not—but the tree remains a tree. Likewise, something may cause feelings of unhappiness in one person and sadness in another. Still, the thing remains the thing.

Fulfillment—the act or process of bringing something to completion—exists in real nature like the tree and the thing, though it’s not physically tangible. Like them, it can evoke feelings of happiness or sadness, but it exists independent of those feelings.

It follows, then, that fulfillment is entirely independent of feeling.
Feeling, defined as the expression of emotion, is a faculty of perception.
Fulfillment, by contrast, is an objective process—defined not by how it feels, but by whether the intended end is completed.

The act of fulfilling is a precondition of fulfillment.
They do not exist independently of one another.
In other words:

The act is the means; the end is the purpose.

Take running, for example:
Running does not exist without the completion of a run, nor does the completion exist without the act itself.
The act of running is only fulfilled when it is brought to its intended end.

Applied to life, this means:

Life is self-fulfilling in the sense that it inevitably ends.

That is, the completion of life happens regardless of how we feel about it.
This doesn’t mean fulfillment can’t feel good or bad—it can.
But the presence of a feeling does not constitute fulfillment.

Fulfillment is not achieved by an end alone—it must be an end that completes a purpose.
And completion presupposes purpose, which itself is presupposed by intention.

The act of running, by itself, is not fulfilling without a purpose.
But “running five miles,” for example, is fulfilling—because it defines a measurable end.

On the other hand, “running fast” cannot be fulfilling, because “fast” is subjective.
“I ran fast” offers no true completion—only perception.

By logic, then, we’ve identified fulfillment as objective in nature—though intangible, like mathematics.

Similarly, “I lived happily” is not a fulfilled life.
There is no completion—only interpretation.

So the question becomes:

What is the five-mile equivalent of life?

The End Before the Beginning

Of course, this cannot be answered objectively. The preferred mileage is subjective to the runner. Likewise, the ideal length—or form—of life is subjective to the living.

Quantitative purpose, then, is a faulty standard for fulfillment—because it is subjective in nature.

It may seem that running leads to running for the sake of running. But the purpose of running cannot begin as “to run,” just as the purpose of life cannot begin as “to live.”

That mindset marks the point at which the process of fulfillment becomes bearable, even enjoyable—but not purposeful.

To run for the sake of enjoyment is to run forever—because enjoyment, like “fast,” can never be fulfilled. It is an infinite end.

And infinite ends are self-destructive.

The runner who sets out to run five miles will not outlast the runner who runs to maintain his health. Because the second is chasing purpose, while the first is chasing pleasure.

Thus, purpose that leads to fulfillment must be qualitative before it is quantitative.

This doesn't negate specific goals. The runner pursuing health may still choose five miles as his measure of daily progress. But the purpose—health—comes first.

Purpose Presupposes Intention

By nature, purpose presupposes intention.
Intention is what gives rise to purpose—and both presuppose fulfillment.

So, the intention to be healthy creates the purpose of running, which leads to fulfillment through the act.

Likewise, the purpose of life, which is the subject of fulfillment, presupposes the act of living.

Where Does Responsibility Begin?

On whom, then, does the responsibility of purpose fall?

It does not fall on the runner—but on the version of him who came before the runner: the non-runner.

Likewise, the responsibility of life’s purpose does not fall on the living—but on that which precedes life.

Purpose is Not Invented—It’s Inherited

Purpose, like fulfillment, is a constituent of existence.
It can only be rightly understood as objective—especially in matters of existential fulfillment.

Existential purpose cannot be created by the living.
Fulfillment, by its very nature, presupposes a true and final end—yet the living are not the authors of that end.

If living is the act of bringing, then death, as far as it can be known, appears to be the end of that act.
But death, like a broken leg is to running, is a limitation—not the completion.

A broken leg prevents running but does not fulfill it.
Likewise, death halts life, but does not fulfill its purpose.

Purpose, therefore, does not fall to the individual alone.
Just as individual cells do not carry their own ends, but serve the higher function of the organism they compose, so too do individual lives participate in a larger, shared purpose.

The death of a single cell does not terminate the purpose of the body—
It is simply a stage in the continuous fulfillment of a higher form.

Likewise, individual death is not the termination of existential purpose.
The objective remains—shared, overarching, and intact.

The Truth About Purpose and Fulfillment

The truth is this:

Purpose pre-exists humanity.

And any fulfillment misaligned with that pre-existing purpose will never result in true fulfillment.

True fulfillment is the subjective experience of objective completeness—a sense of wholeness, where nothing is missing, regardless of whether one feels happy or sad.

To deny this truth is to abstain from the greatest gift of existence.

By logic, our responsibility is to fulfill the purpose of humanity that preceded our life.

What Is That Purpose?

That question must be left for another essay.

But by intuition, it seems that the purpose is love—not the feeling, but the act.
Not romance, not desire.

Love as self-emptying.
Love as sacrifice.
Love as the only act that is both selfless and self-fulfilling.

Can We Know This for Sure?

Yes.
Logic says we can.

If purpose and fulfillment exist objectively, so too must truth and understanding.

And for that, I give thanks to the Creator of the universe—
The source of all logic, all purpose, and all love—
Who gave us these gifts out of love.

I am not the author of these truths.
They have always existed—independent of belief.

I’ve only chosen to uncover them.
And even that uncovering will always fall short.

So this essay is subject to clarification, and to revision—
Because what is true today may not be tomorrow,
But it is true right now.