I used to think I knew what fulfillment felt like. That is almost funny now. I had experienced pleasure. Obsession. Attention. Novelty. Desire. The electric little religions of being admired, wanted, entertained, stimulated. I had mistaken intensity for depth so many times that I thought the two were synonymous.
I thought I was full. I had not even touched the surface.
Now I look at the life I once would have called boring and feel almost embarrassed by the poverty of my imagination. A house that needs cleaning. Children who need feeding. Books stacked beside beds. A husband coming through the door. A pot simmering on the stove. Small hands reaching for mine. A Bible open on the table. The endless, ordinary repetition of being needed.
I used to believe fulfillment would make me feel larger. Instead, it made me deeper. That is the distinction I couldn’t have understood then.
I thought happiness was the feeling of having escaped limitation. Of having enough money, enough freedom, enough excitement, enough attention, enough of whatever glittering thing I had decided would finally quiet the hunger. But the hunger had no bottom. I could have kept feeding it forever. And I would have called the starvation freedom.
Now I know a happiness I couldn’t even have imagined from the other side. Not because every day is beautiful. Some days are ugly. Some days I am exhausted and resentful and standing barefoot in something sticky while somebody screams because their banana broke.
But underneath it is something enormous. A life that belongs somewhere. A love that asks something of me. A faith that gives suffering somewhere to go. Children growing beneath my hands. The strange privilege of becoming responsible for things I did not create and loving them anyway.
I thought I had known fulfillment before because I had known moments of feeling intensely alive. But I was skimming the surface of an ocean and congratulating myself for understanding the sea.
I had no idea how deep happiness could go. No idea that it could become quieter as it became greater. No idea that fulfillment could feel less like fireworks and more like roots.
I became the woman I once thought was boring. And perhaps she was never boring. Perhaps she was standing on the shore of a country I had been too busy running from myself to discover.
I thought I had already found everything there was to find.
I hadn’t even put my feet in the water.
B🤍
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