Ambition Is That Deadliest Sin I’ve Never Cultivated

And maybe I’m in the wrong for thinking I’m better off.

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Ambition.

It feels like a dirty word to me sometimes when I think of it too deeply — but I know so many people have gotten ahead because they’ve made it their clear and worthy goal to pursue things greater than themselves.

I’ve just never been in that category.

Even in the realm of writing, I’ve played it safe. The literary magazine rejections I’ve received made me cold to the game of sending out stories just for them to come back with nothing essentially gained. Even when I did well on Medium — back in days of yore before online writing seemed a sorry game in and of itself — it was more a matter of luck and timing than anything else.

I don’t like putting my nose to the grindstone with nothing gained.

But ambition has a sorry downside: I remember, back when I got my first job and tried to do everything I could to get people to like me all in the process of doing everything right, I would come home every night with a stomach ache and knots of anxiety over what I had done wrong during the day. Ambition, when it was my friend, did me no favors.

In truth, my mental health has held me back more than anything else. Depression, anxiety, a disorder that left me reeling with what was essentially a boulder on my back for the rest of my life, the nature of capitalism as it relates to the sorry folks in the lower classes — I honestly feel these things have made me court ambition, in all its shades, less and less as the years have gone on.

The happiest I feel is when I’m sitting in front a computer or notebook and penning out things that don’t exist: that is the length of my ambition, I fear.