Authored by Grant Spolander. Image credit: FiledIMAGE
The way I see it, there are three kinds of people in this world:
1. Those who know what they want.
2. Those who have what they want.
3. And, those who have no idea.
The first group is easy. Ask them, “What do you want in life?” and they’ll immediately rattle off a Santa-sized wish list. “I want a bigger house in a nicer neighbourhood. A fancier car. A better watch. Better holidays.”
Good for them. There ain’t nothing wrong with that. Go get some.
I’ll come back to the second group later. For now, the people who really interest me are the last ones. They’re the ones who – in the absence of a specific answer – will often reply, “To be happy.”
The moment those words leave their mouths, though, they hear how naïve they sound and quickly correct themselves. “Well… you know. Fulfilment. I want fulfilment.”
Hmm… that’s a completely different word. Happiness and fulfilment aren’t the same thing.
In my experience, people who make that instant correction have realised somewhere along the way that happiness is fleeting. It comes and goes. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t really be happiness anymore. It would just be life.
People who say they want fulfilment are really telling you something else. They want peace.
To be satisfied.
Complete.
To stop wanting.
To be full.
The problem is that our brains aren’t wired for peace. They’re wired for achievement.
A goal.
A summit.
A reward for getting there.
But what happens when you reach the top? Do you suddenly dissolve into a beam of pure fulfilment?
Who knows? No one ever seems to get there.
The real dilemma is that we all define “the top” differently, so nobody actually knows what it looks like. We just keep looking sideways at each other, wondering: Has he made it? Has she figured it out?
So, if fulfilment isn’t an Apple Watch, brand new car or top-tier status on your medical-aid rewards programme… what the hell is it?
What does it actually mean to be fulfilled? Content. At peace.
I wish I knew. But lately, it feels as though I might be getting closer to the truth. I suspect the answer lies hidden inside another, far more common question: Heads or tails?
Let me explain…
As a species, we like to think of ourselves as rational, logical, reason-driven animals. The truth is far less flattering.
We don’t perceive reason, we perceive contrast.
Something is good only because it can be measured against something bad.
Warm exists because there’s cold.
Love because there’s loneliness.
High notes because there are low notes.
Happiness because there’s sadness.
Our minds are constantly searching for contrast. We call a photograph beautiful because of the contrast between light and shadow, colour and texture, foreground and background.
A good meal is only good because we’ve eaten bad ones.
A great movie only exists because we’ve sat through terrible ones.
Everything we value is defined by what it isn’t.
Like a coin. One side creates the other.
The mistake we make is going through life labelling every experience as either good or bad. If it’s good, we think, I need more of that. If it’s bad, we assume something has gone wrong.
We expect life to be a coin with only one side.
Which, when you stop to think about it, is hilariously impossible.
It’s like flipping a coin and expecting it to land on heads every single time.
So, we come back to the original question: What does fulfilment actually look like?
Well, if fulfilment and peace really are the same thing, perhaps the answer isn’t hidden on the heads side of the coin. Perhaps it’s found in accepting that tails belongs there too.
We’re an optimistic species. We spend our lives chasing the next promotion, the next holiday, the next relationship, the next Friday, convinced that once we get there, life will finally settle down.
But it doesn’t work like that.
The promotion comes with more responsibility.
The holiday ends.
The relationship takes work.
Friday becomes Monday.
Heads become tails.
The mistake isn’t that tails showed up. The mistake is believing it never should have.
Maybe fulfilment isn’t the feeling you get when life finally starts landing on heads more often. Maybe it’s the moment you stop needing it to.
And that brings me back to the second group. The people who already have what they want.
On the surface, society wants us to believe these are the ones with the biggest houses, the nicest cars, the best holidays, and the diamond-status memberships. But I don’t buy it.
Maybe the people who have what they want are simply the ones who’ve stopped expecting life to land on heads every time.
I once read a line that has stayed with me ever since: “If you don’t know what you want from life, it’s probably because you already have it.”
Funny enough, 4×4 travel teaches this lesson better than most.
Vehicles break.
It rains.
You get stuck.
You take the wrong turn.
Border crossings get delayed.
And yet, years later, those are the stories we remember. After all, adventure isn’t the absence of problems. It’s the acceptance that problems are part of the adventure.
So, the next time a trip doesn’t go according to plan, flip a coin into the air—but don’t look at which side it lands on. Just remember that the good comes with the bad, the sunshine comes with the rain.
And the best stories usually begin the moment things stop going according to plan.
