Ambition

I never thought of myself as ambitious. How can you be ambitions when you don't even know what you want to do? One of my biggest struggles as a young man was figuring out how I could be of value to the world. You hear people say, I alway knew I wanted to be a pilot or I plan on being a pastor when I grow up. I was the poster child of not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Well, maybe not the poster child, because it really bothered me. My generation seemed to want to tell the world they could care less whether they ever made something of their life. I wasn't really like that. I cared a lot about trying to be something ... it was just difficult to name that something.

And so through my twenties and into my thirties I really strived to find something I was good at, to make something of myself, to be something really meaningful. I was ambitious to have an ambition. Striving is such a good word for it ... man, I feel tired deep in my soul just typing that word. Strive. Lots of coffee in that word. Lots of notebooks. Lots of re-reading.

I am not sure exactly what I hoped to achieve, maybe just success, plain and simple ... maybe just some place where someone from some height would look upon my effort and say "Well done. How did you pull that off? Amazing! You made it. You are significant." Instead, I feel that I pretty much exploded, imploded, crashed the bus, lost the fight, etc.

There were some years of just feeling the pain of such a crash ... sort of feeling the joy of surviving, being alive, and the horrible pain that I messed everything up. And then I think there was a realization that significance wasn't necessarily public. I still strive in a way. I still drink too much coffee, read to many books and fill up to many notebooks. But now I take it to be who I am, not something to be graded. Who would grade it? Except me. And those who know me and are close enough to push and challenge.