A few words on Ambition

Have you ever felt like the people around you were stuck in a loop? Their goals seem unknown or superficial, never straying from the script given to them by society. Their dreams are not truly theirs, they are just generally accepted ideas of what a dream should be: “be rich,” “be smart,” “be successful.” But what is “successful” to you? No questions asked, they just know that it is what we should strive for.

There are many reasons why this lack of ambition exists. Throughout my teenage years, I blamed a lot of it on the education system, which never really prepared anyone to follow their passion. Schools were there to pass you the script and make you fit your role. They could help you if you wanted to switch roles within the play, but they could not accept the idea that you might not want to be a part of the play at all.

In other words, they could help you figure out your best subjects so you could decide on a university course, but they would not help you discover yourself. “I’m good at math, so I should do a math-related course! But do I want that? What course should I do? What does an electrical engineer even study? What does a computer engineer actually do at their job?” Those questions and many others are not treated as valid. Even worse, you are not encouraged to think about them. If your dreams go outside an academic path, the situation is even bleaker because that is too far off-script, and that is not what they want.

From what I have observed, the script is seen as a “proven path” by both parents and the educational system as a whole. No one wants to see people go outside of its scope. For parents, this could be for good but misguided reasons, such as not wanting their child to “fail.” Or, it could be for selfish reasons, like wanting to use their child as a trophy to show off to others, proving they raised someone who fits the generally accepted definition of success. Ultimately, all of this combined can create a person who never develops a real dream. They were truly molded to follow the path other people created for them, and breaking out of it takes a lot of reflection and experimentation.

A second reason for this lack of ambition is rather obvious: fear. Specifically, the fear of failing to achieve your goal. That feeling is worse the bigger and more unconventional your dream is. It is easy to lose your ambition entirely if you feel like you could never really achieve it. We are scared of failing. We are scared of not being able to meet the expectations of the people around us, as well as the expectations we put on ourselves.

If you, reader, have that problem, I can completely empathize with you… but stop with that cope, idiot. Unfortunately, that is the hard-to-swallow pill for this particular problem. The solution is simply “doing it.” The worst feeling you can have is going the rest of your life wondering what could have happened if you had the courage to seek what you really wanted. If no one around you can tell you that, then I am doing it for you right now. Do. What. You. Want. Because this is the easiest problem to solve on the list. You already have ambition, you are just suppressing it.

Of course, we could subdivide these reasons and break down infinite cases as to why people get stuck in these loops. I didn’t even talk about cases where a person does have ambition but is stuck unable to follow it, causing that burning passion to die out over time. However, I think I got my point across.

That point is that ambition is important. Not soulless goals or generic dreams, but real ambition. Having a clear objective that you want to achieve so much it almost hurts is vital. It doesn’t matter how big it seems, how stupid it seems, or how crazy it sounds. You will never know if you never try.

So, that is my final question for you, reader. Do you have that ambition? Is it really yours? Are you really working towards it? Think about it and see what conclusion you reach.

Thanks for reading.