What does it mean to "get the most out of life"?
I would genuinely like to know the answer to this question. I think about it all the time lately and it only makes me more unsure of what fulfillment is. It seems that "fulfillment" is really the key idea here - if you get the MOST you can from life, then you have found fulfillment. Or I suppose you've at least found a reason to live that makes you feel like you have a purpose. Though, is having a purpose the same as being fulfilled?
So, maybe the key is more than being fulfilled. Maybe it's having a sense of WHY you live to go hand in hand with the WHAT you live for... Maybe you feel fulfilled when you have a purpose in life? In that case, what if your life's purpose is compromised or you're betrayed by those who helped cultivate that very purpose?
For example, what if you're a woman for whom being a great mom and a devoted wife is your number one purpose for living (this lifestyle would work for ME, but it works for some women, my mother included) and then your husband cheats? He has betrayed you and your children. Now do you feel like you were living for a lie? I think that some women would be devastated by such an action, but other women would cling to the idea that being a mother is valuable enough that their husbands' infidelities would not supersede their purpose.
Now, another example, say you've worked your entire life for a company only to get to the top and find corruption, greed, and/or illegal acts... How would you feel knowing that your life's work contributed to the success of an inherently immoral corporation? I think this would depend on the extent of the corruption (just the CEO or the whole executive team) the affects of the corruption (padding expense accounts vs. distributing medications with undisclosed and deadly side effects) and of course, your own ethical beliefs.
Regardless, I want to know what makes life worthwhile because I DESIRE a life lived to the fullest extent. I hate the idea of waking up in 10, 15, or 20 years and saying, "where did my passion go?" or "when did I leave all my dreams behind?" I just can't live knowing that is going to be the outcome. It makes me feel ill to think of living in a suburban home with a white picket fence and an extra 30 pound of "baby weight". Ugh. What a nightmare.
Then, I have to weigh my husband's desires. He's so very all-American. He totally wants to go off to his successful and fulfilling job and come home to his beautifully maintained home with a kid or two and the dog waiting for him by the door. Now, he knows that I want to live and work internationally, which he says he is open to doing, but at the same time, he talks about these other (more traditional) desires. I realize now that I was too quick to get married. I love him but at the same time I'm having a harder and harder time understanding how we're going to make our lives work together without one person making massive, soul-crushing compromises. I thought that I would want the things he wants, but the more I get into my new career, the less those things appeal to me.
Of course, I would never leave him, but I can see myself allowing him to leave me if he can't accept what I want anymore. I feel like it might happen in the next five to seven years and it will be about children. Honestly, I can't bear the idea of being pregnant. There is not one iota of my personality that wants to be a mother. I feel a little ill and disoriented thinking about having a fetus (eek!) growing in my uterus. He knows that I'm really weird about kids, but I know he doesn't think I'm never going to want kids. I used to assume that I would eventually get a big dose of hormones and get baby fever, but now I'm just not sure. I'm in my mid-twenties and I don't want kids just as much as I didn't want them in my early-twenties... And this is exactly why I think he might not be able to handle it down the road.
Who knows though. Maybe I will get the baby fever. Maybe I will want to live in the States. Maybe I will want to coordinate car pool schedules. Maybe those things will make me feel fulfilled.
But in the end, at the core, my instincts tell me that I will need something more to get the most out of life...
