Acton students cement their learning throughout the year by cataloguing “Lessons Learned” and “Lessons Not Learned.” These lessons are pooled wisdom into which the entrepreneurs can dive as needed in their future endeavors. The Lessons Learned column invites alums to share the moments when those lessons surface in their post-Acton lives. 

I’m not happy, but that’s okay.  One of my Lessons Learned at Acton is that happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment are three really different things, and that most people, myself included, tend to aim for happiness even though the pursuit of happiness is not where the most positive outcome lives.  In life-after-Acton I struggle to place fulfillment and satisfaction above happiness.  Ironically, it has made me happier.

The primary way I distinguish between happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment is temporally.  Happiness is a moment—it can be captured in a snapshot.  Satisfaction is ongoing, and could be captured in continuous film, a video of daily life.  Fulfillment is a time loop, or it transcends time—it would be a time capsule of a whole lifetime, our choices and their effects projected past the length of our own lives.

If temporary happiness is really the be-all, end-all, then the addict has it right.  We should all just buy some, or switch it on, or eat it, until we run out of funds or lose our minds or die.  Happiness is binary—I am happy, or not, in each moment—and it’s a state of being.  Satisfaction and fulfillment, on the other hand, have gradations.  In order to be satisfied and fulfilled I have to have identified a need to sate and an emptiness to fill.  There’s a journey necessary, something to complete.  I’m going to need to live longer and more intentionally in order to achieve satisfaction and fulfillment than to be happy. 

To achieve satisfaction I have to ask myself, “Do I have ‘enough’ of what I need?  Is life generally good?  Do I have good relationships, a decent home, decent work, decent health?”  And to achieve fulfillment I need to imagine asking, at the end of my life, “Did I fill an emptiness?  Did I work toward my calling, Did I strive to find and complete my purpose, Did I push myself, Did I help others?”  To achieve happiness I can get myself a great steak within the hour and die right after—done. 

The Oxford English Dictionary uses the words happy and satisfied to describe the word fulfilled, satisfaction to describe happy, and fulfill to describe satisfy.  I suppose as time goes on we get more confused about the differences between these experiences.  But the OED also gives us etymological clues to distinguish between them.  Fulfill comes from the late Old English fullfyllan (“fill up, make full”).  Satisfy comes from the Latin words satis (“enough”) and facere (“make”).  Happy comes from the Middle English hap (“chance, fortune”).

I’ll need to return to this lesson often in the years to come to prioritize each opportunity and troubleshoot each choice. The lesson learned is use my life to “fill up” some emptiness in the world, to “make enough” of what I need to live contentedly while I pursue that purpose, and to leave the rest to chance.

Photo courtesy of peyri

Tags: Advice, Alumni, Class of 2011, Guest Writers, Happiness, Lessons Learned

Posted in Acton Scholars, Blog