Fulfillment (Touch)

I was up late tonight (till 440am now) and was watching the last 3 episodes of Touch (Japanese anime about HS baseball). It dawned on me, after seeing the finales where the guy has struggled for 2 years (3 really) trying to get his team into the HS national championships, that true happiness and satisfaction often requires struggle.

Standard formulation:
Dream
Struggle and fight
Failure or mishaps
Success

If you can do those things I think you can truly understand what it means to be happy in something and feel like you've really accomplished something.

I believe in my life.. I've had a relatively easy road. I think I've often (career-wise for sure) jumped ship too much to really be able to say I've been an integral part of a success. While I was in successful companies, I was never really the one who made it successful. I usually saw the going getting bad and said screw this, and went to greener pastures. Terrible but as I am older and slightly wiser, I realize you have to often stick with things thru the bad (relationships, jobs, etc).

I strive to be able to build something or be part of something I can be proud of.

You all should watch Touch oneday. Fabulous story. It is a whopping 101 episodes and all in Japanese though. You could always rent the 3 part movies (which I personally translated for the anime community back in 94-95 or so). However the movie doesn't quite do justice to the struggle.

I'm all about struggle.