Life's Fulfillment

I am struggling this morning with the concept of fulfillment in life. Or, should I say fulfillment of life?

I believe that each of us has a contribution to make toward the evolution of humanity as a whole. That the goal to that evolution is for us to become more and more God-like. I believe each of us has a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses and how we combine them will tell the tale of each of us fulfilling our role. Making our individual contribution.

To achieve a fulfillment in life is to make our own unique contribution to the best of our ability. To do that we need to identify that unique set of a strengths and then educate ourselves on how to deliver them to others. Next we need to clearly see, admit, and then accept those weaknesses as our own before finding others whose strengths will help us overcome them. And, rightly offer our strengths to help others overcome their weaknesses.

But to achieve a fulfillment of life there is some sense of self that we need to surpass. I was born as one thing and will die as another and I rate the distance between the two on some nebulous unit of fulfillment. Is it really going to be St. Peter's notebook that confronts me? Or will the standard be so much more than what I was taught as a child?

My current dilemma is this: the greatest strength that I admit to is my ability to write. To create fiction to help illustrate humanity's foibles so we can, as a people, discuss and uncover what is true. But I spent over forty years hiding that talent. Why? Because as a youngster, and I mean as young as three years old, whenever that talent showed itself I was laughed at. This was Nature's test to see if I could overcome adversity and work to accomplish my contribution.

And it is here that I am starting to believe comes the fulfillment. There is no sense of accomplishment without the striving to accomplish. Consider the 7 foot tall man dunking a basketball versus a six foot man. Nature will put hurdles in the way. This is a fact. Knowing this, we should prepare for the hurdles as part of any plan toward accomplishing any goal we have. Like the waves of the ocean we get hit, we fall down, we get up and continue. How far have we gotten? What's next? Anything missing? What did I learn? Where is the next wave?

We can't truly know to what extent our contribution must go without us being tested. Pass the tests. Keep standing up when we fall down and continue. Nature is steering each of us in a particular direction and following the path laid out for us will lead to both fulfillment of and in life.