Ambition

The word “ambition” has such a proud feeling attached to it. In my world, it’s the ultimate driver. This desire to achieve, make a difference and be successful is applauded and thus, addictive. It’s born out of this dog-eat-dog environment that I have been engulfed in – always surrounded by overachievers, raised by truly successful parents that made a lot out of little, and thrown into different continents where the single common factor that the majority of the people around me possess is a desire to get somewhere, before embracing what is already there.

Ambition is tuned in my mind to be positive, and good, and healthy, and the right way to go about living my life. And all this is great – the daily dose of food is never an issue, the world suddenly makes sense because I can afford to see a lot more of it, and the ladies enjoy the talk that comes along with it. There is also this voodoo sense of superiority that lingers over. All hunky-dory, of course.

But, also omnipresent is stress, hair loss, a lack of time and the constant feeling that there is a lot more left to achieve. And, when all that loads itself into my drive, a parallel ambition-less universe becomes a lot more interesting. In the end, ambition is a social construct severed by society that we succumb to believe is the right path. Throw that in the trash, and my mind seems revolutionized. I suddenly like not being ambitious. That itself is ironical, and well, sad. Just doing enough to make ends meet and living an eventful, joyous, stress-free spirit should not be revolutionary.

All this is easily said and thought. Doing it is extraordinary, because for me, ambition is now the safer path. Wow.

P.S. All this eerily comes down to the overused and annoyingly true “grass is greener on the other side” metaphor.