My love is a love of discovery, not really systematic understanding. Still, you figure things out over time if you keep going. And it is easier to keep going if you love what you are doing.
Amateur
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This leads to our first word: amateur. I find it somewhat embarrassing that I didn't figure out this etymology for myself as I have studied enough Spanish to know that "amar" is "to love." Furthermore, I hope we all know about the kind of amore that hits one's eye in the fashion of a larger than average pizza pie.
That an amateur is someone who loves can be taken a few ways. For one, since they are not paid for the activity, it could be inferred that the only reason left to persist is some kind of love, hopefully for the activity itself, but someone could love attention as well, no? Another possible spin is that the word contains an old truth that to do something for reward takes away at least some of the love. Working for money puts you on deadlines, causing stress and forcing you to pick techniques and tools for speed and power rather subjective enjoyment and perhaps even safety. Because I am never on a hard deadline with my creative work, I get to choose the tools I like. Handsaws for wood, and first drafts written in pen on paper.
Sadly, in our contemporary culture, if you love something you are encouraged to "go pro" in it. To do this, you first need the right (often expensive) credentials, and this process alone can take away the fun. Even if it doesn't, the grind of doing something every day, and to the specifications of customers, can. Lastly, you are almost in all cases forced to be "a pro" in only one thing. I would rather have the option to be an amateur in -- ie love -- multiple things.
Integrity
===
Even if our society can keep itself going on a material level, something which I have my doubts about, I think we are dealing with a crisis of integrity which threatens us psychologically. I don't just mean the dishonesty of our culture, where nearly everyone of a certain class works in PR, though that is a big problem. I mean that we are dis-integrated, socially, psychologically. Talking with people who are better adjusted to our systems, such as my wife, I often hear about how important it is to "compartmentalize." I contend that is a part of the problem. Putting everything in these non-integrated compartments makes it easier to accept more horrible things (fair enough as survival skills go), but it also makes it easier for those who do horrible things to feel fine and ultimately do more horrible things. This isn't quite the same as arguing there is a rise in sociopaths, or even sociopaths in high places, as has become a fashionable line of argument (something fashionable can be correct), rather a good many bad person and an army of enablers all think they are the good guys.
In order to join nearly any paying organization -- and many that do not -- it is expected that you will dis-integrate from any prior principles you might hold in order to serve the organization, the biggest two being clarity and honesty -- both part of the long-gone square-dealing.
As Wendell Berry writes in What are People For?
Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world (54).The rituals surrounding dis-integrity start with the very beginning, with one's bid to join the system. In academic courses that deal with "values," it becomes telling a teacher what he or she wants to hear. In interviews, questions are built to force you into something other than real candor. "What would you say is your greatest weakness?" It would be smart to say something like "I work too hard ... some say I care too much" rather than what you know to be the truth, or what would know is the truth if you were a person of integrity. (It's even better for the systems if you are so out of practice with self reflection, or so practiced at giving these types of responses, that you don't even know you are playing the game).
Note: do what you need to do on the interview. These rituals have become so wide-spread that even some relatively enjoyable jobs have them. In the long run, you need some purchase within systems to live and in order to interact with first-order sane -- but second-order insane-- people (or maybe I mean vice a versa). Do not underestimate how unpleasant it is to have radicals, drop-outs, bohemians, or anarchists as your only emotional support system. Also, when you are inside systems you have to hide that you are doing the right thing, but at least you have some capabilities to act. My advice: render truth unto truth, lies unto lies, and bullshit unto bullshit and hope for (as well as work on) having the wisdom to tell the difference.
Fulfilled
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Peter Korn's Why We Make Things and Why It Matters belongs right up with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and, in my opinion, above Shopcraft as Soulcraft, which I find a bit too reductive in its pronouncements.
There is a lot to the Korn book, and I highly recommend reading it all, but what stuck me the most was its observation on fulfillment. I will let Korn speak for himself.
Happiness and fulfillment feel like two distinct states of mind to me, and of the two, I find happiness greatly overrated by those who present it as life's ultimate goal. (124)
[. . .]
However recalcitrant the universe may be, when I am creatively engaged I have a sense of purpose and fulfillment that makes happiness seem like a bauble. Ask me if I'm happy when I'm making something in the workshop and I have to stop and think about it. It's not an important variable in the equation. (125).He also gives this life pro tip
Creative fulfillment is not something to achieve and keep, like a college degree or an Olympic medal. It resides in the process of making the table, not in the satisfaction of sitting at it. Without generation, the wires go dead. (126).These are profound truths, ones I am inclined to think our society does much to hide.
As I turned over the importance of fulfillment in my mind, it started to seem so simple: fulfilled is to be filled fully. And the only thing that fills you fully is what you can give all of your attention to. Unfortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) does not back this up as the etymology, leaving me with more of a mnemonic (or less politely, a slogan) which I find charming. OED traces the earliest uses of "fulfilled" to objects physically filled to the brim, which is now archaic ("look how fulfilled that cup is!") When fulfilled moved closer to an emotional sense, it meant to completely supply what is wanted or needed. Unsurprisingly, the citations for this transition period are mainly religious -- the idea being that only God can leave you fulfilled.
Happiness
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This etymology I came to through my time teaching. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo says "Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell,/ His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell." Hap here means fortune, ie luck. In this case, the OED very much backs me up, showing that "happiness" as a subjective state does not even begin to show up until the 16th century. Shakespeare was alive for when the meaning began to shift.
The etymological sense of hap as what happens to us lives on in words like "hapless" and "happenstance." Whatever happens happens -- and in this view it is somewhat absurd to think your happiness is within your control.
There is, however, an old sense of "happy" to mean "successful in performing what circumstances require; apt, dexterous" that has citations as old as circa 1340 and 1400. While this doesn't sound much like the "happiness" that American consumers take as life's only goal, it is close to the fulfillment-via-craft Korn is alluding to.
I don't think it would be worth the effort to try to restore the older uses of happiness, however. After all, our current use has a meaning, one that be measured, researched, and even brain-scanned. Take Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness or Tony Hsieh's framework/checklist to get that subjective state so valued in our culture
1) perceived meaning
2) perceived progress
3) perceived control/autonomy
4) social connection
Well golly, these seem to have more to do with environment, much of it happenstance, than simply having a positive attitude or getting your mindfulness on.
Putting It Together
============
Pursuing integrity -- keeping myself together and down to relatively few compartments and faces -- makes it easier, or, in my case possible, to create meaning. Also, it frees energy to make progress. Furthermore, our culture leaves less and less places for autonomy as we shift further and further from the habits of a free people. Some proximate causes for this shift were 9/11 as catalyst within our culture of fear, reforms in our school systems, multiple generations of entitlement culture, and group-think as entertainment and brand engagement model. None of these seem to be going away, so autonomy will continue to be a rarer and rarer commodity. If you can find durable autonomy at your job, good for you. Most of us will have to find a place to retreat instead. I have my workshop and my pen.
Fulfillment-via-craft, even if it is not treated as it's own intrinsic value, is a vehicle to happiness. You can find progress, meaning, and control in it. But there is a great tension between craftsmanship and social connection. This is especially true in these times, as it turned out our social needs are very easy to hack into. If you have to be watching and/or performing at all times you are trading away time and energy you could use to be immersed in a freely chosen project. We should look at waves and cycles, rather than mindless habits. There is a time to create and a time to connect. In order to be psychologically integrated or get to all of the legs of happiness you must challenge the ideology of always needing to be connected and its enforcer: the fear of missing out.
