Happiness and Fulfilment:

I would define happiness as ease, comfort and distraction, whilst fulfilment involves effort, excellence and recognition.  Many bold, heroic types say they have no interest in happiness and desire only fulfilment in life.  A third, monkish sort says they desire nothing in life and have achieved the perfect enlightenment of non-being.  I classify these people as no better than rocks.

I think the middle path is best -- in the main people should seek happiness, but every now and then should lean in and achieve fulfilment.  It only takes once to make your life a success.  Fulfilment, almost by the definition of the term, fills you up.  Your life can be fulfilled if you helped win World War II even if that was 50 years ago.  Or, as a mother, it can be fulfilled on your child's wedding day.  You don't have to constantly blaze new trails and make new inventions to stay fulfilled, once you've won you've won.

If you strive solely for fulfilment you'll end up burned out halfway and probably won't actually get it.  If you relax and restore your reserves your mind and body are tapping to perform extraordinary feats you'll go a lot further.  Happiness is that very healing process.

But independent of happiness' usefulness towards fulfilment, it would still be good.  You can get really far in life by not having any particular discomfort or want of anything, having something fun to do always at hand, and knowing nothing you care about is in imminent danger.  With those birds in the hand the bird in the bush of 'fulfilment' isn't so enticing.  At the very least sacrificing happiness for fulfilment is a fool's bargain.

You're likely to only feel fulfilled once, or if you're a super cool individual let's say once a year.  If you don't leaven the rest of your days on this mortal coil with happiness your life is going to really suck.

All of my novels have given me fulfilment, but '100 Waifus' most of all.  There is nothing more fulfilling than a book you can read 30 times and love more than the first time, especially with the recognition of 15 fans who gave it a top, 5-star rating.  I know for a fact that I wrote a masterpiece no one else could have written and no one else can ever match.

My top anime rankings are another source of fulfilment.  No one has watched or studied or cared about anime more than me, and I was able to reinvest all of that time and energy into something of lasting worth for the outside world -- a guide to how and why they should watch these shows and benefit from them too.  I took the effort of watching and rewatching all these series in full and carefully grading their worth relative to all the other anime made and between each other, turned it into an excellence of good judgment for what makes a great anime great, and received the recognition of anyone who consulted said post for their own anime-watching endeavors.

The top anime rankings are a work in progress -- earlier this summer I had fulfilled my oath and not only watched but rewatched all anime listed in my rankings, but that's no longer the case.  So long as new great anime keeps coming out I have to continuously re-fulfil my oath time and time again.  In addition, seven of my ranked series haven't even begun yet which really puts me in a bind.  But one thing I can say is every year my anime rankings have improved drastically from the year before.  I put a lot of work into it.

Of course, this blog is a source of fulfilment.  The million views and dozens of approving comments are all the recognition of excellence I need.

But this music hall of fame, once completed, will join this pantheon of life defining successes.  Has anyone ever tackled something as ambitious as this?  Identifying all the good music ever made, listening to all of it 100 times, weeding out all the remixes and failures, judging all the songs fairly and accurately relative to each other, and then posting the results for all to see, so that they too can enjoy the best the world has to offer?

We're talking 5510 songs here.  In the future I plan to grow that number!  Has anyone presented a larger list or one so thoroughly vetted as mine?  People don't have to like every single song.  Just start at the top, 5-rated ones and then if you liked them on average try out the 4-star rated ones and so on until you no longer find anything of worth.  My opinion doesn't have to perfectly match the reader's to be a resource to them.

Of course I have to actually finish rating everything first before this advice applies.

The beauty of it all is I made myself happy for six years with the distraction of music, and then topped it off with the fulfilment of a music hall of fame that investigated the truth behind it all and then delivered it to the outside world.  This is two birds with one stone.  Ideally this is how it should be done with everything.  The distraction of playing football turning into a Super Bowl victory, or the distraction of raising a child to the fulfilment of their gratitude.  If you're seeking fulfilment in such a way that you're never happy you're going about it all wrong.  It doesn't have to be an either-or.