What does it mean to call someone ambitious? It means you think they’re driven and striving for more than they have and maybe even a little cutthroat. It has a great connotation sometimes but means something less desirable too. Ambitious people are looking out for themselves, right? They might leave that company or this place or those people. Or you. They might strive for more somewhere else. They might struggle and fight as they force their way toward something they want.
But I don’t think being ambitious necessarily means being a liability or a wild card. I don’t think ambitious even means being cutthroat or tough. Ambitious means driven fulfill the wild imaginings that seem out of reach or too hard. Ambitious means defining one’s own ideal and then grasping at it and reaching and struggling and maybe at some point stopping to see that you’ve gotten closer. Or not and feeling crushed.
Ambitious means being disappointed when you expected more. Or hoped for it. Sometimes viciously so because being let down is ugly enough when you weren’t invested.
Ambitious also means lying in shavanasa at the end of yoga class and being completely unable to “empty your mind” and “focus on your breath”. And instead using that time to think about getting a master’s degree or writing a novel or getting freelance work online because free time is for the established and affluent. It means being driven to excess and struggling to find the balance between “but I wanted that!” and reality. I think ambitious also means coming to terms with the idea that wanting and working doesn’t always mean getting. And, for me anyway, struggling with that realization more than once.
I want more. I want to make more money and do more work. I want to love my job, not just like it. And I want to live somewhere that is beautiful but also feels like home. I want to be with the people I love and the people who love me (and let me tell you how fucking complicated that’s turning out to be). I want to be worth something. Not just in terms of capital or goods. I want to be worth something to the people I know. I want to be a better friend, better partner, better child, better sister, better colleague, better stranger.