Immaterial ambition

I’ve never been a very ambitious person. Or, at least, I never considered myself to be.

Maybe that’s because I’ve been fortunate to have grown up with a certain degree of privilege—a great many creature comforts and assets and wealth—and so the desire to gain more 'rank, status, wealth, or power' never really caught on.

Of course, that’s just one, rather trite, definition. Because ambition—true ambition—is really a desire to achieve any particular end.

That could be: living with less regret. Or less hate. Or leaving the world better than you found it.

Chasing after a dream is an ambitious thing to do. But so are many other things, like taking a risk on something new, doing something you’ve never done, or simply striving (for years and years) to be a better version of yourself.

You don’t have to want anything material to be ambitious. You just have to want something—anything really—and be absolutely formidable in your approach to making it happen.