Satisfaction: pleasure versus fulfilment

In pursuing thoughts about happiness from an earlier posting, I got to thinking that I am seeking to earn myself a sense of satisfaction by means of pleasure. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of listening to Vivaldi ('Four Seasons), Sandy Denny ('Who Knows Where the Time Goes?' or Van Morrison ('Madame George'). I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of watching Spirited Away, Amelie or Koyaanisqatsi. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of a well-prepared Indian, Thai or Chinese meal. I feel satisfied when I when I experience the pleasure of Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's Provençal scenes, or Pollock's swirling rhythms. And what if I spent my life engaged only in consuming? As vital as each source of pleasure is to me (other than in matters of taste and preference, little different from football and soaps), and I should dearly love to have more of every source of pleasure-induced satisfaction in my life, something would be missing.

I have spent a significant part of my life volunteering, and I continue to volunteer in one respect or another. The paid work that I now do is about helping people, which makes my work much more satisfying to me than were people not helped as a result. It is important to me that my work (whether voluntary or paid) is meaningful in some way, so that while I am engaged in it, and also when I have completed a task, I enjoy a sense of fulfilment, and consequently satisfaction. Visiting cities overseas can be remarkably hard work, due to my travel sickness, difficulties in locating vegan-suitable food, and ensuring adequate wheelchair access to museums (I telephoned the Musée Marmottan in Paris, and was assured that access was no problem as there is a stair-lift at the entrance, but when we arrived the stair-lift was not only out of order, but looked as though it had been out of order for a long time), to hotels (I have discovered that the doors to most bedrooms in Holiday Inn hotels are too narrow to admit a wheelchair) and onto public transport (on each wheelchair-accessible bus for La Guardia that arrived over a 90 minute period the wheelchair lift was non-functional, generating considerable anxiety that we might miss our flight to DC). Perhaps because of having to overcome such difficulties, I can achieve a considerable sense of fulfilment, as well as pleasure, from visiting cities such as Paris, Berlin and Venice, New York, Washington and Vancouver, contributing to my overall sense of satisfaction with the experience. Constructing my website, or developing my photographic skills, or improving my ability to communicate in some other language, is often demanding in one way or another, and consequently offers the satisfaction of fulfilment, especially on those occasions when the discipline involved fails to generate pleasure in the experience.

In conclusion, I guess that I am motivated to achieve an only-occasionally fully-satisfied sense of satisfaction (who else but the Rolling Stones?), in part through pleasure, and in part through fulfilment, neither of which alone is sufficient, but in combination and balance can offer considerable satisfaction for a while.