A Word About Ambition

I have two long-term goals in my life, no three: 1) To be a teacher. (And I don’t mean an unqualified teacher of my-boss-is-making-me-learn English as a second language in some hoity toity South American metropolis. — In the end, this may not have been the most shining of experiences [but certainly not the dullest, either, Jena Past], but I’d like to think that it will have contributed some sort of hash mark that will probably look much more significant, in a nonchalant sort of way, only after several other hash marks have been had.) Oh Christ. What a desultory line-up of perfect tenses—ESL text books are doing a number on my syntax. Number Two. 2) To not ever have children. 3) To have one Original Thought, one time in my life. (I wouldn’t mind having two or three of them, but that seems unjustifiably selfish—seeing as (a) these opportunities are so hard to come by, and (b) I think we’ve all got enough on our minds as it is.)

I was recently accused by a roommate (Surprise! I moved!) of having no ambition. No ambition! Me! No ambition! I’m ambitious, damn it. I want things. I’m getting there. Maybe there’s no emblematic white picket fence to be accounted for; maybe my ambitions are a bit more unconventional, but shove it. I have ambitions.

And, if it’s not immediately apparent that this is actually a lofty ideal, I can at least agree that The Original Thought is an obscure ambition. (An ambition, nonetheless.) But let’s think about this: How many people do you know personally who have had some brilliant, or even very idiotic, but still a very strikingly original idea? It’s all been thought before[pessimistic overstatement]. There are a handful of protoids (that’s original!) that have the gall to call dibs on originality.

—Love, taken. Hate, taken. Every degree in between, taken taken taken. Sibling rivalry, thought of. Eternity, covered. Finiteness, covered. In betweens, theorized a hundred times over. Anything pertaining to individual or collective responsibility, free or regulated markets, personal or financial or abnormal growths; all manner of manias, every obsession, every fear has a name.— So what’s left to think? Everything is a rerun of some obtusely brilliant man’s description of what is or what may be or what should be or what was once.

My ambition is to be an inventor of an Original Thought. Just one, so as to keep an overinflated market at bay. … So that’s pretty boring. I’m going to go read a book on the metro and stew over the acheivements of others. And then I’m going to log my fourth and fifth hours of work for the day, and call it a night. I have no time for ambitions.