This is Emily Fox Gordon’s take on feeling fulfilled, at the age of 66, in the thrall of “a sturdy contentment” that is not solely about achievement. In her Opinion essay in the New York Times, she calls the gift of fulfillment a surprise, “an outlandishly oversized gift,” while at the same time acknowledging what one must have spent in order to feel it: many years lived.

Each of us gets to decide what "fulfillment" will look like for us. Gorden describes hers thusly:

"How does fulfillment feel? To me, it’s quite pleasant, a mixture of satiety, amusement and tenderness. I look out at the world through it, much as I imagine those Regency dowagers in Jane Austen’s novels did, the old crows who sat back a little from the dance floor. I never imagined that they envied the dancers, but now I suspect they were enjoying themselves more than the young people they observed. They had one another to whisper to, and they had that rare and privileged thing, an unobstructed view."

To read the essay in its entirety, click HERE.