What do we really want in life?

All around me, people are always jumping for different things. Having job stability (or at least getting a decent job), finding a partner, buying a house, a car, getting kids, living in excitement, going on vacations, fulfilling their parents' desires.

Everyone acts due to different drives and these drives many times lead to unfulfilling lives.

I always ask myself what it is that people are searching. What is the common factor in everyone? If we could make a life that would make everyone feel fulfilled, what would it contain?

I wouldn't know for myself. I can name many things, but most likely, after I got them, I'd still be unfulfilled. On the other hand, Buddhist monks seem to feel somewhat like they are accomplishing something in their nothingness. They sit there all day and meditate and if they have a good sitting day, they feel like they've done something good.

Then we have people who work jobs they don't like because they need the money or they want to take something out of this. Are they working toward fulfilment? I doubt they feel better than Buddhist monks, even though they do more things. But if we have someone who has a lot of money and is all the time on vacations, hiking, camping and trying new things, perhaps they feel as fulfilled as a Buddhist monk.

With these two, we can contrast activity with inactivity and have the same result.

Then we have the typical romantic movie with someone who meets their ideal partner, has a stable job, cute kids who grow up to be independent and happy, and they confess on their deathbed that they have everything they might have wanted. I don't know how much of an accurate depiction that is (I've never seen such a case), but that's the socially accepted stereotype of a good life.

At least, that was until the new age of Jackass and pop stars came along and crashed against this wave. Now people also want to live lives full of adventure and it's commonly accepted for certain subcultures that living an intense life and dying young is the best way to go about things. Trimming life to its essential and not worrying about consequences.

Die, Young!

I found an album name called Live fast, love hard, die young, by an artist I never heard about who lived from 1932 to 1996. He was ironically called Young (die young, Young! Nah, just 64 years old)

Young apparently felt the music industry, which had undergone a revolution of sorts in 1991, had mostly rejected him (a sentiment shared by a number of artists of his generation). A combination of that particular theory and despondency over his deteriorating health were cited as possible reasons that Young shot himself on December 9, 1996. (source)

This man lived by the philosophy of enjoying life to the fullest and when he couldn't enjoy it any further, he killed himself, I gather. I don't know if he stayed true to enjoying until the last moment, but it's a bit anticlimactic that he'd die feeling bad and unfulfilled (rejected by the industry in which he worked his entire life; not fitting into the changing scene).

And at last, we get to a question. Why do we have to live fulfilling lives? What is it that pushes us toward this idea? Can't we just... do things... and that's it? I think that part of the problem is that not only have we been pushed toward the idea that we can feel fulfilled by doing certain things, but also toward the idea that we should seek this fulfilment. Be it emotional, financial, social or political fulfilment, many people feel that they need to approach something, that they are walking a road that has a set direction and end.

For me, however, I'd like to propose that we are not walking a road but simply roaming aimlessly, and that trying to find a way is just like looking at a tree in a field and saying

"we've been walking aimlessly for too long, I'm walking toward that tree righ there"
"why?"
"dunno, feels better than walking toward that other tree"
"but why are you walking toward a tree?"
"hmmm, i need a path, an end, otherwise i will feel unfulfilled with my life and die alone and sad"

Should we question the end, the path, the walking, the need for action, the need itself or the general insatisfaction?