Many affairs in life are not simply good or evil, but lead to possibilities that may be deemed good or evil. An action, then, relies not only on intent but also on its possible consequences.
One such affair is ambition.
It is not wrong to say that relentless, unstoppable effort and motivation to achieve one’s goals may be among the most powerful and inspiring attributes to possess in the world. It is a force that drives societies toward innovation, an incentive to work harder, and the very thing that, when directed rightly, can solve most of the world’s problems. It keeps people from losing hope in life. The ambitious are usually the ones who leave a dent in the world, the ones who get going and stay going. But the very thing that leads you forward may also lead to your descent.
Ambition, you see, comes with a degree of morbid obsession. Healthy ambition, then, is taking control of the degree of obsession you put in. Once you give it your all, you start to revolve your life around this one entity. Because you have already sacrificed so much, what’s wrong with a little more, right? But it doesn’t really end. It is an insatiable thirst, an endless loop of dissatisfaction, a Sisyphean trap where you roll the boulder again and again. There will always be more to achieve, more to be done, more to be conquered, and hence more to be sacrificed.
It makes you perceive your potential and victories as much more than they may be. It makes you so self-important that everything that doesn’t serve your ambition and goal becomes less relevant, less important, and hence more sacrificial. This can include connection, joy, passions, and relationships, the very things that make life worth living and make us human may become mere liabilities in your way. Then, very late, you will realise the chronic emptiness of this whole unrestrained drive for external gain, which had blinded you to the joys you might have had in those moments. Once the limit is reached or exceeded, you will become not only aimless but also lose the things that really mattered. You begin to overestimate yourself so much that you create an ideal image in your head, an image of massive potential and perfection, and you become so attached to it that when reality strikes, even one failure can shatter it, throwing you into a whirlpool of identity crisis.
The very overestimation and ambition that led Icarus toward the sun ruthlessly hurled him down into the sea of nothingness. Faustus’s desire to transcend the boundaries of knowledge ended up becoming his eternal damnation. Macbeth’s ambition for power left his hands bloody.
If we move away from fiction to reality, it was obsessive ambition that drove Napoleon Bonaparte to march his men into a frozen wasteland, eventually leading to a European alliance against him and his exile. It was the same ambition that led Alexander the Great to force his army through the monsoons of India, leading to a mutiny. His unfulfilled obsession turned,hence, into paranoia and an eventual downfall. Adolf Hitler’s drive for a huge empire led to a war, turning his army to dust and destroying Germany.
Not only this, but the relentless chasing of a material goal makes you sacrifice your present for an illusion of future completion. How can it complete your future when the very essence of life, in all its glory, emotions, beauty, and love, has long been gone? When people are so focused on their aspirations, they preclude themselves from immersing fully in the present. They chase the next material entity, whether money, resources, or projects, distancing themselves from all other aspects of their lives. Experiences, relationships, joys, moments, and memories are either sidelined or tainted with a bitter residue of anxiety for the future and guilt over nothing but experiencing life in its raw, natural form.
You become stuck in a loop of wanting more and more, not appreciating or enjoying what you already have. Come to think of it, the end goal, and we are talking about the very end goal here, is always happiness. You want more to satisfy yourself and the people around you. You want to gain more, be it respect, satisfaction, financial security, an identity, world order, or comfort, whatever it is. You want it for more joy. But how can you feel joy when you have traded away the very joy, time, and experience in pursuit of whatever it is you are chasing? You have traded your greatest luxury, which is time, wasting it all on material pursuits that were meant to bring you happiness, yet happiness is the very thing you sacrificed.
If not careful, victory in one thing may result in you losing everything else. Many successful people, after achieving their dreams and goals, are left feeling empty, because once the act and journey of pursuit is out of the equation, nothing is left. So what would all the money and success mean when you are going through a constant feeling of emptiness? Chasing one ambition obsessively excludes you from meaningful experiences and connections, which are rated by almost everyone as the most important things on their deathbeds.