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Will They Remember Your Name?
May 14, 2019
“That’s why nobody will remember your name.”
These are the words that Achilles spoke to a young boy right before going into battle. (Troy). The boy had just told Achilles that he’d be fighting a giant that he (the boy) wouldn’t want to fight such a man. Achilles had ambition.
Ambition is at the heart of every substantial achievement. Without the fuel of ambition, the engines of change won’t move. Without ambition, we’re left to accept things as they are. When things are good, we hope they’ll stay that way. They won’t. When things are bad, we passively hope they will get better rather than doing something about the situation. They won't.
Without ambition, we have apathy.
But what is ambition, exactly?
I want to offer you two metaphors for thinking about ambition. The first one represents ambition at its best. The second one represents the shadow side of ambition. Yea, pretty much everything has a shadow.
Ambition as a Bridge
Ambition arises when we notice something wrong with the universe and we feel the urge to do something about it. It might be a gap that you notice in your own life; something that seemingly impacts you and you alone. It might be a gap that you notice out there, in the world, impacting a few, or a whole lot of people. Ambition is the bridge between the world as it is and the world as it could be…as it should be.
When you notice a gap in the universe, it causes you pain. Whether or not you act on the urge to do something about it depends on how much it hurts and how much you think it will hurt to do something about it.
Steven Pressfield, in his book, Turning Pro, says…
“To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on our selves and on the reason for our existence.”
Heavy stuff, huh? I think the reason Pressfield feels this way is because he is holding ambition as the desire to bridge the gap between the way the world is and the way the world should be. The stakes are incredibly high. The rightness of the universe is at stake.
Ambition as a Ladder
Now, ambition often gets a bad rap. It’s pretty easy to look at the headlines and find a story about how some a-hole of epic proportion did something terrible to someone in order to advance their own misguided agenda.
Jerks have ambition too.
I think they have a different metaphor, though. Rather than seeing the universe has having a gap between what is and what could be, the Jerk sees the universe as a ladder to be climbed. Ambition is what provides the energy to climb and climb, even if it means having to climb over someone else or to pull someone off the ladder entirely. The climb is all that matters.
I suspect if Steven Pressfield thought of ambition as a ladder, he would probably wish that more people turned their back.
What is the role of ambition in your life? Which metaphor are you using?
When held as a ladder, ambition feels like a contest. The problem is that you may not win. You may get hurt along the way. You may worry about hurting someone else. We’ve been around long enough to know, there are always more losers than winners in a contest.
When held as a bridge, ambition may start off as a whisper of possibility in your ear. “This isn’t quite right. You should do something about this.” The problem with a whisper is that it’s easy to ignore. It’s easy to shout down. The whisper may or may not become louder. Listen for those whispers.
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