Dictionary.com tells us ambition as a noun is defined as: “an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction and the willingness to strive for its attainment.” As a verb, they define it as: “to seek after earnestly; aspire to. Human nature demands that we seek after something. We may seek after fame and fortune, or we may seek to be loved, but each of us is seeking something, and that seeking itself is called ambition.
Ambition calls us to fight for the things we want. Ambition calls us to better ourselves. Ambition calls us to make the world a better place, at least for ourselves. On days when I don’t feel good or feel depressed, I might only have the ambition to get out of bed, but it’s still an ambition. All of us have ambitions even though some have been beaten down so much they have difficulty acting on those ambitions. Even then ambition is likely to take on the form of a dream about fighting back or getting revenge.
Many who know me would place me in the category of someone without ambition because I don’t care about making bunches of money. I only want enough to meet my needs and a little over to give. I don’t want a large house or a new car. Those require more than I want to put into them. I’d rather drive an older car and use money to help others. Am I altruistic? Not really, I just don’t value money for money’s sake. I am also not un-ambitious just because I’m not seeking the bigger, better job or money making opportunity. Some of you writers will appreciate that the previous is a good thing for an aspiring writer.
Ambition is common to man, and while some see it as a bad thing, it doesn’t have to be. Ambition is what gets us going; it motivates us to change things; it calls us to use our drive to achieve. No, we are not all ambitious in the same way, but we are all ambitious, so the only person out there without ambition is the one who has been laid in the ground.
Ambition is a human drive. Some use it for good and others for their own gain, but we all come with it to one degree or another. The goal is to use our ambition, not only to attain things for ourselves, but to make the world a better place for all. Our ambitions take on different forms, but just as each can use individual talents in a unique way, each can use ambition to drive them to their own unique calling on this planet. Ambition makes the world go around.
“ambition.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 21 Aug. 2008. .
