Ambition is eager or inordinate desire for honor and preferment. No aim can be achieved without having ambition. A man without ambition is like sky without stars and moon. Ambition is a driving force which leads us towards success. Ambition is the first step to achieve something. The stronger the ambition is, the greater will be achievement. Nothing could be achieved without ambition. What I believe is sticking to ambition is more important than having ambition. Being ambitious is not enough. It is necessary for success that one should stay ambitious. So, ambition should be permanent. It should last forever or as long as goal is achieved. Ambition makes us ready to face hardships when working hard for desired goals. As it is said: ‘no pain, no gain’. Ambitions which last very shortly do not bear fruit. Ambition means a strong desire to achieve something worthwhile; to become successful, wealthy, educated; or to achieve any other specific aim. Ambition is first and foremost thing to achieve something. In this definition essay, I will be answering the following questions: What are the qualities of ambitious people? What is etymology of ‘ambition’? How strong desire can ambition be? Is ambition limited to human beings only? What is the difference between ambition, desire and wish? How can ambition be classified? Describe any life experience of ambition?
Let me explain the etymology of ‘ambition’. The word ‘ambition’ has been derived from Old French ‘ambicion’, or from Latin ‘ambitionem’ which means ‘a going around,’’ especially to ask for votes. Therefore, ambition means to have desire for something. Striving for favor, courting, flattery, a desire for honor and thirst for popularity are all ambitions (Online Etymology Dictionary).
Ambitious people are goal-oriented and they always work hard for betterment. Ambitious people can work fearlessly. They can take risks because they are more determined and brave. Ambition makes ambitious energetic and full of purpose. They avoid competing with others because their best competitors are themselves. Ambitious people avoid company of useless and bad people. They love the company of other ambitious people (Fast Company).
Have you ever noticed moths flying around fire? I am going to give you an example of moths in order to explain how strong desire an ambition is. Moths are also ambitious. They have ambition to stay close to light. They like light very much and they are crazy about it. They are wildly ambitious for bright light. They are, indeed, more ambitious than human beings. They try to wander around light or even fire. Their ambition for light is more intense than their ambition for life. They keep hovering over fire. They seem to be playing with it with no fear at all. They move close enough to burn their wings ending up burning themselves. So, it is how strong desire ambition can be.
Ambition is not limited to mankind. All living things have ambition. Ambition is, in fact, a feeling or emotion. As all animals, birds and other living beings have emotions, they also have ambitions. All of living things can become ambitious for something. All of them have a strong desire to achieve something. For instance, a mother sparrow is always ambitious to get food for her babies. She wanders here and there in search of grains. She searches for grains for her babies. As she is mother, she does everything she can in order to get food. So, everything that breathes on earth has ambitions; everything that has emotions also has ambitions. Here, I’d like to give very strong message:
If you want to fly like eagle or if you want to touch the heights of success, you will have to burn your wings like moths in ambition.
I believe that ambition is not limited to adults only. Children and even babies have ambitions. Really, babies are also ambitious. Ambition is a feeling or emotion. Babies do not have wisdom, but they do have feelings. They want things and struggle for them. For instance, you hang a candy over the head of a baby. It will cry for it and it will for struggle for it and will try to get it. So, it will be ambitious of that candy.
Ambition is something different from other similar words like wish and desire. Ambition is much greater thing than them. Wish or desire means to like something and to want to have it. Wish or desire is not so serious act of wanting something as ambition. Suppose I pass through the bazaar and I find something attractive – it could be anything like watch. If I feel like having it, it would be my wish or desire. I will buy it if I can afford and I don’t buy if I can’t. It won’t make a great difference. On the other hand, ambition is something much different. It transforms us into a changed, but better person. It stirs our hearts and minds. It controls and overcomes our emotions and feelings. It grants us courage and determination. If an ambition to achieve something is created in us, it makes us work for it. It makes us work as hard as we can. We don’t feel peaceful until we achieve our goal. Achieving goals feels like greatest satisfaction in our life. Ambition makes much difference. It makes a person great. Ambition grants us courage and determination to get something.
I am going to give an example of my own ambition. I used to have an ambition past few years ago. I faced poverty and it had been very difficult to live on what I had or I earned. I had got into such circumstances that I used to believe that either poverty would strangle me to death or I would strangle it one day. I became ambitious to overcome that poverty and to stabilize myself financially. My ambition made me a changed person. It made me face circumstances manfully. If made me work as hard as possible to achieve what I wanted. I did two things: firstly, I worked day in and day out to earn enough for myself; secondly, I overcame or controlled my wishes and desires for things which I could not afford. Finally, I strangled my poverty and I got over my poor circumstances. Here, I want to deliver very important message: it’s okay to control your wishes and desires if you can’t fulfill them, but you should never ever try to control your ambitions.
Ambition can be classified into two types: worldly ambition and spiritual ambition. Worldly ambition makes us want worldly pursuits, whereas spiritual ambition is connected to religion. Ambition to be successful, to be rich, to be educated or to do any other worldly thing can be termed as worldly ambition, whereas ambition to please God, to stay close to God, to help the poor, or to do anything religious can be termed as religious or spiritual ambition. Worldly ambitions help to achieve worldly aims, while spiritual ambitions are aimed at gains relating to the hereafter. Having ambition is inevitable to achieve something either worldly or eternal. Nothing worldly or spiritual can be obtained without being ambitious. I can quote a very good example of a person who used to have spiritual ambition. Tolstoy is a good example of spiritual ambition that can be quoted here. Tolstoy was a great novelist. He was born in Russia. He was born in a palace of 42 rooms and all his palace was decorated with wealth. In his youth, he lived his life luxuriously. He had everything he needed and he wanted. But, interestingly, he had such a great spiritual ambition in his later life that he lost all his wealth just for spiritual gains. In fact, he distributed all his wealth among the needy and the poor. Although he led very luxurious life in his youth, he chose to live with simplicity in his later life. He preached peace and love in his novels and he served the poor. So, it was the result of his spiritual ambition that he gave away all his wealth to poor people to achieve something spiritual and eternal (Wikipedia). We can find so many examples of worldly ambition from history. Samuel Walton is a good example of worldly ambition. He had a great ambition to become successful and wealthy person. In his early age, he spent a life of extreme poverty. He milked cows and delivered newspapers. He was nothing in his early life. He worked hard to become successful. He started to manage a variety store when he was 26 years of age. He bought his first store by taking loan and he bought second store very soon. He had good luck and kept on developing his business. He remained ambitious to become more and more successful and went on with his work. He ended up having 1,960 Wal-Mart stores, employing almost 400,000 people and with annual sales of $50 billion (YOURSTORY). So, worldly ambitions are connected with worldly gains: success, wealth or other worldly aims. On the other hand, spiritual ambitions belong to achievement of spiritual things, eternal pleasures.
Ambition can be positive or negative. Good ambitions can be termed as positive, whereas bad ones can be termed as negative. Some people having got ambition for something run after it blindly, they forget the discrimination between right and wrong. They want to achieve their goals either by hook or by crook. They use illegal means and it is their ambition to do something through corruption, bribery etc. Such ambition is not acceptable in society. Such ambitious people achieve their goals, but they create disturbance in society. They cause evils to spread in society. So, we should have positive ambitions. We should use legal means to achieve our goals and we should not compromise on morality.
Moreover, ambition can be individual and social. If a person has ambition to achieve something and works for it, it’s his or her individual ambition. But if the whole society or many members of society want to achieve something common, it could be social ambition. It often happens that many people in the society face the same issue and they all want to get rid of it. They all have the same ambition i.e. getting rid of the problem they are all facing. Social ambition is very much important for the development of a society. Nations can make progress if they have social ambition. They can develop their countries if all of them are ambitious to do so. Development of a country largely depends upon social ambition. When all the people of a country are united and they work together with strong ambition, no one can stop such a country from making development. There are countless other benefits of social ambition. Social ambition brings people closer; it unites people; it brings harmony and understanding among people; it spreads peace and love in society. There are so many examples from history when people were socially ambitious. They worked together and remained united and they achieved their goals finally. On the other hand, individual ambition plays an important for progress and success of the individual having ambition.
To conclude, ambition is a strong desire to achieve something. It is an extreme emotion of human beings which overcomes all other emotions. It gives them motivation and determination to become successful, wealthy, prosperous etc. It gives us motivation and courage to achieve something. Ambition is not limited to human beings. It can be classified as spiritual and worldly; positive and negative. Success is utterly impossible without ambition. It is crucial that we should keep ambitious until we achieve what we are ambitious for. Ambitious people are committed, determined and courageous. They can cope with problems bravely.
Works Cited
- Fast Company. Six Habits Of Ambitious People. 2016. 24 1 2019
- Online Etymology Dictionary. ambition (n.). n.d. 24 1 2019
- Wikipedia. Leo Tolstoy. 2019. 23 1 2019
- YOURSTORY. 7 inspiring rags to riches stories of entrepreneurs. 4 5 2014. 23 1 2019
