Great authors and writers discuss fulfillment and the different routes taken to find it. Fulfillment is often found in religion, great adventure, success, happiness, relationships and the list continues.

Being a 17-year-old girl, I cannot say I have yet to accomplish everything I aspire to do in my lifetime. However, I have found a hungry fullness, capable of allowing more and more to contribute to my contentment.

Any sort of faith, not just religion, allows myself to breathe easier, as there is hope. Faith nulls any fear of not only the unknown, but everything; endless assurance even when there are not any tangible signs of clear waters.

Adventure is one of the more significant aspects to my fullness: encouraging altruistic curiosity and venturing past home borders. Travel shows the foreign's ability to completely enchant me; the need for open mindedness. There is so much beauty that I have yet to see, and my life serves as a time for exploration for my mind to change with different airs. It is a dual sense of urgency and serenity that I have just this one lifetime to experience cultures, continents and oceans. Author Jonathan Foer wrote in his novel, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", "sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.” This quote motivates me to fill each day, because days become life, and I have a feeling that before you know it, it's gone.

I dream often of all the different lives I have planned and how they become cohesive. Maybe daydreams lead to fullness too, if you believe that they too can be real.

Success can be interpreted in countless arenas: monetary, hierarchal, academic, approval, contentment. As a female teenage student, there are many opportunities for success beyond getting the A, although that letter seems to be a dominant indication of success. There are internships to practice a passion or an acceptance to a higher level of education. To put it simply, it makes me happy that tenacious work not only results in approval by others but in self applause and pride. Knowing that the work or efforts I put into my life furthers me as a unit of society and hopefully society itself, gives me the warm and fuzzes.

Happiness, I was always told, is a road and a choice. I'm sure we as people over complicate happiness. It is a road and a choice, often hard to find but easy to stay. Reflecting back to moments of heartbreak and disappointment, there was an ever present inkling that this too shall pass. Happiness roots fullness-- I truly believe you need one to have the other.

Lastly, relationships, in particular: friendships. The people surrounding you should fill you with ideas, perceptions and inspiration. Friends should be teachers, teaching you how to see and enjoy the world differently and how they see you, in love and care. Personally, I feel encouraged whenever I'm near my friends as if I am capable of anything, flirting with invincibility. My heart melts and strengthens every time I even think of them.

I have so many books to read, languages to learn, issues to resolve, organizations to start and people to meet. So maybe I'll never become fulfilled; I can't read every book, become fluent in every language, solve every issue, create numerous non-profits or meet every inspirational person. . . But I can be full. Full to the very brink of exuberance and still feed more. I am so full and still searching and so satisfied.