Ambition

One of the questions children are most commonly asked is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It was once mainly boys who were asked, because all good little girls, people assumed, would naturally want to be wives and mothers. Being a shy little boy, I myself didn’t often get asked, but if it did come up, I really didn’t know what to say. For one thing, I didn’t like the whole idea of growing up at all.

But also, I seemed to have no particular talent, interest, or ambition. There was nobody I knew – certainly not in my own family – whom I admired enough to want to be like them. I had no heroes – not in the real world anyway, though I was as much enamored of the characters in comic books and movies and on the radio as any other kid on the block. And there wasn’t any pursuit that attracted me enough to want to make a career out of it.

Only in my teens did it develop that I had some verbal and artistic talent, and I began to nourish a secret desire to make my living as a writer. But I had no idea of how to go about this – and nobody to guide me – so it actually took until I was in my thirties for that ambition to become a reality. But even then, I achieved it only by creating a new form of writing – the illustrated epigram – and by avoiding publishers, and selling it myself, on postcards. That turned into such a lucrative and satisfying profession that I might have continued cultivating it to this day, had not new forms of technology come along, and made the postcard as passé as the horse and buggy.

So, compared with the aspirations of some other people, mine were at least relatively harmless. I didn’t even want to be rich, just to make a living at my chosen craft. But what about those people who really do want wealth, and the power which is supposed to accompany it? What about the Alexanders and Caesars, the Napoleons and Hitlers, who wanted to rule the world? They might have bitten off a big chunk of it for a few years. But the world as a whole, may actually be unrulable. In any case, human life is finite. Nobody can be too powerful for too long.

One hopeful sign about today’s world is that the wealthiest people tend to be those who have contributed most significantly to humanity – and in general, they seem to be less interested in ruling the world than in improving it. Philanthropy has apparently become the name of the game.

Of course, there were in previous generations the Fords, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, even the Nobels – but their fortunes weren’t always built on laudable enterprises. Sometimes it was just through getting control of a particular commodity. And their philanthropic impulses seem in general to have arisen late in their lives. Today we have the phenomenon of often surprisingly young people, by virtue of genuine intellectual innovations, becoming fabulously rich and powerful, but devoting their fortunes to such crying world needs and causes as education, health, and peace.

Most people, however, still have more modest ambitions, which tend to be centered around their own families, jobs, and hobbies – and as they get older, their hopes and dreams shrink and fade. Einstein, in his last years, after revealing a little more of the universe than had ever been known, came down to Earth, tried to prevent another war, and then, having failed in that, at least sought to ensure that the right side won. Bertrand Russell, having opened vast vistas in mathematics and philosophy, found himself, in his nineties, leading marches to ban the atomic weapons which Einstein had helped to created. James Irwin, an astronaut who in 1971 walked on the moon, thereby attaining what was once considered the ultimate goal in life, later became a devout Evangelical minister.

Shakespeare left us with some very critical thoughts about ambition. Mark Antony’s famous forum speech in Julius Caesar centers around the idea that Caesar was killed because he was “ambitious,” and claims that Caesar’s concern for his fellow-citizens disproves that accusation:

“When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”

So take note – if compassion is what’s holding you back, it may be that your own ambition needs to be made of sterner stuff.