IN
QUEST OF FULFILLMENT:
MONEY,
ACHIEVEMENT, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN, PLEASURE, & RELIGION
Introduction
Can
We Fulfill Ourselves?
All of us want fulfillment.
In fact, we might spend most of the years of our lives
trying to fulfill ourselves in various ways.
This little book empowers us to examine six
common ways
in which we often seek fulfillment:
money, achievement, marriage, children, pleasure, & religion.
Even if we have not explicitly formulated a
philosophy of life,
we have already implicitly organized our lives in such directions.
Any of these paths to happiness could extend indefinitely.
And usually, we follow several paths to fulfillment simultaneously
—sometimes giving greater emphasis to one or another.
However, the surprising thesis of this book is
that
none of these six paths ultimately leads to fulfillment.
We can certainly find relative happiness on each of these paths,
but ultimate fulfillment comes only in a way we do not expect.
Some of us might have to try all the paths for
ourselves
before we conclude that they do not lead to fulfillment.
But others will learn vicariously that we cannot fulfill ourselves.
This book hopes to aid such vicarious learning
—thereby sparing some readers a few years of futile striving.
Only after we have become thoroly convinced
that self-fulfillment is impossible
—either because our own efforts to fulfill ourselves do not succeed
or because we see the futility of other people's striving—
will we become open to the possibility of Existential Freedom.
Little has been written about Existential
Freedom
because it is such an unusual form of existence.
And yet, this joy, realization, & consummation of being is possible
for all of us.
In principle, all of us can open ourselves
to the ultimate completing of our beings.
But since life is short, many of us will never find this fulfillment
because we will spend all our years pursuing happiness in other ways.
Only when we realize that all the normal
'fulfillments' are empty
will we become ready to make the profound re-orientation of being
that will permit our Existential Malaise to be
cured.
2 IN QUEST OF FULFILLMENT by JAMES PARK
The page above is the first page of the Introduction
of In
Quest of
Fulfillment.
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Created
May 24, 2008; Revised