3 Things Everyone Wants
There are universal desires—three things everyone wants, yet few have the audacity to pursue—and understanding them reveals what it truly takes for life to feel complete.
Spend enough time listening to people speak about what they want from life, and a subtle pattern begins to reveal itself. One person longs for financial independence. Another dreams of traveling the world. Someone else wishes to create and express themselves more fully. Some want recognition, while others simply want peace.
On the surface, these desires appear wildly different, shaped by personality, circumstance, and ambition. But look more closely, and a surprising trend emerges. Beneath nearly every goal, aspiration, and longing sit the same three underlying aims—not career, not relationships, not status, but something far more fundamental.
What people are ultimately seeking are the conditions that allow life to feel complete. These are often mistaken for preferences or ambitions. In reality, they form a trine—a harmonious set that together creates the experience of balance. Across cultures, philosophies, and psychological frameworks, this trine appears again and again. People are not simply trying to have things.
They are trying to become whole.
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This pattern is not new.
More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle argued that the aim of life is not happiness, but flourishing—what he called eudaimonia. To flourish, a person required three things: the ability to make choices for themselves, the opportunity to exercise their nature through meaningful activity, and sufficient external resources to sustain their life. Without material stability, he wrote, flourishing was impossible.
Centuries later, Abraham Maslow would describe a similar structure in his work on self-actualization. He noted that before a person can realize their potential, they must experience autonomy, meaningful engagement, and a sense of security. When any one of these is absent, the psyche becomes preoccupied and unable to grow.
Modern psychology echoes this again in Self-Determination Theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Their research shows that human wellbeing depends on autonomy, purposeful engagement, and environmental support.
Even in the work of Viktor Frankl, who studied human resilience under extreme suffering, we see the same pattern. People could endure unimaginable hardship if they retained a sense of inner freedom, meaning, and the basic conditions necessary to survive.
Different eras. Different languages. The same structure. Together, these form what we might call the architecture of wholeness. And within that architecture, we find the three universal desires:
Freedom—the sovereignty of the self
Fulfillment—the aliveness of the self
Fortune—the sustenance of the self
Freedom
Freedom, in this context, is not rebellion, nor is it simply the absence of constraint. It is something more intimate and far more essential: the ability to direct your life according to your own will. It is the condition in which your choices are not dictated by fear, obligation, or survival. It is the space in which you can decide how to spend your time and expend your energy.
Without this autonomy, even the most comfortable life can begin to feel like a cage. However, many people mistake freedom for external circumstances—a certain income level, a flexible schedule, a lack of responsibility. But true freedom is not defined by what you avoid. It is defined by what you are able to embrace. Not just running from something misaligned, but running to something meaningful.
The desire for freedom often reveals itself indirectly. It appears as a longing to leave a job, to move to a new city, to design something of your own, or no longer feel managed by the expectations of others. Beneath these surface impulses is a deeper urge: to live in accordance with one’s own nature rather than continuously adapting to circumstances that feel imposed.
This is why freedom sits at the foundation of the trine. Without it, a person cannot live in alignment with who they are. They may be successful. They may even be admired. But they are not content, because they do not feel whole. Freedom is the sovereignty of the self—the assurance that your life is being shaped from within, not governed from without.
Fulfillment
If freedom allows you to direct your life, fulfillment determines how it feels to live it. This is the dimension of the trine that governs your inner experience—the sense that your days are not only chosen, but purposeful. It is the glow that comes from engaging with life in a way that feels expressive, intuitive, and deeply personal.
Fulfillment is often mistaken for pleasure or achievement. But it is neither. Pleasure is fleeting, and achievement is external. Fulfillment is internal and enduring. It is the belief that your life reflects something essential about who you are. This is why creative expression and emotional connection play such a central role here. They are not ambitions or indulgences, but mechanisms through which the self comes alive.
You can observe this clearly in people whose lives appear stable and autonomous, yet who feel an unshakable restlessness. They have freedom. They may even have fortune. But without fulfillment, their experience of life is flat, colorless, and strangely distant.
Because to feel whole, a person must not only oversee the direction of their life. They must be present within it. Fulfillment is the aliveness of the self—the condition that allows you to flow through life with inner resonance.
Fortune
This is the most misunderstood element of the trine. It is often reduced to wealth, status, or accumulation, when in reality it refers to something far more foundational: material sufficiency that allows the other two conditions to exist. Fortune is what enables the psyche to relax.
When resources are unstable, when survival feels uncertain, when basic needs remain in question, the mind cannot settle into freedom or fulfillment. It becomes preoccupied with preservation. Attention narrows. Creativity contracts. Choice begins to feel theoretical rather than real.
This is why, across philosophy and psychology, material stability is never treated as a luxury, but as a prerequisite. Aristotle was explicit that external goods were necessary for flourishing. Abraham Maslow placed security at the base of human development for the same reason.
Fortune, then, is not about excess. It is about sufficiency. It is the condition in which your energy is no longer consumed by managing uncertainty, and can instead be directed toward thriving. Without fortune, even the most self-aware person finds themselves pulled back into survival mode. And in that state, wholeness is out of reach.
Fortune is the sustenance of the self—the condition that makes space for the rest of the trine to fully unfold.
What we often describe as “wanting more from life” is rarely about striving. It is the inner recognition that something fundamental is out of balance. Not a milestone. Not an acquisition. But a way of living that has not yet settled into harmony.
Across different lives and circumstances, the same pattern explains this unease. When one part of the trine is neglected, life can appear polished on the surface and still feel unsettled beneath. A person may feel secure yet confined. Independent yet uninspired. Passionate yet uneasy about stability.
This is why happiness is so frequently misunderstood. It is not a destination you reach, nor an emotion you sustain through effort. It arises naturally when the structure of your life supports your identity. When your days are self-directed and inwardly engaging, a sense of coherence begins to take shape.
To seek happiness, then, is to continually tend to the trine so that your life feels integrated rather than fragmented. What follows is an invitation to look more closely at each dimension and consider how you might restore balance, allowing your life to feel whole.
Reflections
Where in your life do you feel most self-directed, and where do you feel subtly constrained?
Which parts of your daily experience feel most engaging and alive, and which feel routine or hollow?
Do you feel materially supported enough to relax into your life, or are you quietly preoccupied with stability?
If one element of the trine feels strongest for you, which feels most neglected?
What tensions or frustrations in your life might actually be signals that one part of the trine is out of balance?
What small shifts could you make that would bring greater harmony between how you live and how you feel?
Resources
Jung’s Five Pillars of a Good Life (The Atlantic)
A modern reflection on how happiness connects to psychological health, relationships, beauty, meaningful work, and philosophical perspective— reinforcing that happiness is multi-dimensional, not a single endpoint.
What If You Pursued What’s Interesting Instead of Happiness? (Greater Good Magazine)
This piece explores contemporary research suggesting that meaning and psychological richness may play equally—or even more—important roles in a good life than maximizing pleasure alone.
There’s more to life than being happy (TED)
Based on her bestselling book “The Power of Meaning”, Emily Esfahani Smith discusses how the four pillars of belonging, purpose, transcendence, and narrative create a rich, meaningful life.
To Have or To Be? (Erich Fromm)
In this book, Fromm contrasts a life centered on accumulation with one rooted in presence and inner vitality, arguing that true fulfillment comes from how we live, not what we possess.
Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
Frankl reflects on surviving the Holocaust to show that meaning—not comfort or success—is what sustains human life, even in the most extreme circumstances.
The Happiness Workbook (Viveura)
A guided journal designed to help you clarify your values, define your philosophy, and realign your life around a deeper understanding of happiness.
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