Fulfillment as a Process of Becoming 5
Experience Over Judgement
Static vs Dynamic Perspectives
Fulfillment in life is not achieved by uncovering or discovering values or meaning or narrative. This is an impossibility, for there is no fixed viewpoint in life.
Life can only be affirmed from multiple perspectives, as it appears in the flow of time as duration and becoming; life beyond appearances, having no ground or foundation, just pure difference.
Freedom from a life formed from a static point of view opens us up to the force of life itself, the affirmation of life’s creative power.
Fulfillment as Process
Fulfillment then, is not a goal or solution in life. Fulfillment is a problem, the problem of creating, and the act of creating.
Articulated in terms of value, meaning and narrative, fulfillment is an effect; an interpretation, a reflection of a life. This we do from time to time, it is natural, but it is secondary.
Of primary concern is our participation with the active forces within and around us, our continual awareness of desire overflowing.
Central to leading a fulfilling life, as a verb, and to be distinguished from fulfillment, as a noun, is our leap into the present that passes, our rolling forward with duration as the pure measure of time, and our affirmation of the eternal return of difference as our guide as to how to engage in the next moment of our lives.
We are the creators (and destroyers) of value, meaning and narrative; they are but temporary creations or images that dissolve into the virtual.
Leading a fulfilling life is opening up to the life that passes through us continually, not objectifying our own ideas of a meaningful life.
We may create values and meaning and narratives from time to time, but when we do, we have stepped out of life momentarily. We leave behind life as pure experience.
The Eternal Return of Pure Difference
In a sense, the process of becoming, the return of pure difference, in the context of a human life, is the perspective where the how of life overcomes the illusion of the what of life.
When we adopt the perspective of life as a process of becoming, the imaginary duality of authentic engagement (the how) and meaning and values (the what) dissolve.
Authenticity, meaning and value become one in an overall ethic that affirms life and the creation of the new.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2022 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
