Ambition shouldn’t be a dirty word
A ex-boyfriend’s mother once told him we would never last because I was too ambitious. At the time, I was young(er), in love and honestly offended. Wasn’t ambitious supposed to be a compliment?
At the time, I equated ambition with a successful career. I was always a bit of an overachiever and a feminist, and my post-college career goal was to become a VP in a major PR agency. (While PR students and entry-level associates are often female, women are missing from the upper echelons of PR agencies.)
But just eight months after accepting a position at my first-choice PR agency, I decided to take an incredible risk to quit and move to France. I don’t regret that for an instant, but now I’m back in America, surrounded by friends with high-paying jobs, fabulous apartments and cosmopolitan social lives. My fixed-life envy is stronger than ever.
I’m living at home, working for the family business and scrimping every penny I can. It doesn’t exactly feel I’ve become the twenty-something success story I’d always envisioned. Sure, I’m leaving for another adventure in Australia. Another adventure where my savings will most likely deplete rather than grow, where my fun won’t exactly be resume-worthy and where I likely won’t be achieving the last two milestones to adulthood.
But, in a way, how I define ambition has also changed. Instead of a strong drive for success, I see it as a desire to be happy. I’ve found myself skipping down streets, twirling in the sunshine, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath–in other words, looking like a crazy person, but a very happy one. Scientists have found that making less money forces you to find happiness in things other than material goods, and thus, happiness is more lasting than the fleeting type fed by consumerism. The same reason that poor workers in third-world countries often seem much happier than the corporate drones of America. And it’s why a sunny day in a beautiful place makes me a billion times happier than a new, expensive purse.
I suppose I am a bit too ambitious: I’m not willing to settle down before I see everything I want to see. And I refuse to live a life that doesn’t make me head-over-heels happy. If that means my ambition is a deal-breaker, I think I can handle that.
