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"Fame! I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly -- high! Baby, it's coming together ..."
I desire to achieve self-annihilation after death. Key will be to pare down my possessions in stages, eventually to just my next meal slung over the shoulder in a kerchief-bundle on a stick.
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I am ridiculously ambitious, and I find ambition to be the single sexiest quality one can have. Coupled with confidence, it's nearly irrestistable.
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I'm pretty ambitious but my ambitions are different than what are normally considered "ambitions". I'm rabidly ambitious about having a close family and raising good kids, and spending as much time together as possible. As a result I don't work outside the home and we don't do some of the things that would get us "ahead" in the rat race, but would take us away from family.
Nor will my kids ever win a medal in the Olympics, because the sacrifices of family time to get that good are not worth it to me. I'm impressed by those who are that good, but really I pity those like the Russian skater who had to leave home at age 11 to move somewhere else to train - and leave his parents behind. I'm way too "ambitious" to let that happen to my family.
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I'm not too ambitious. I dream about having the perfect life, but I don't know if that's even possible, so I don't really pursue it actively.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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I'm going to make loads of money, limit presidential/governmental power/control, and garner enough inlfluence in the movie industry so I can bring down the income of movie stars back to sub-poverty.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Personally I tend to refrain from ambition. The word seems to carry a negative connotation with it. I dream and strive towards goals, but tend to ignore urges to defeat others.
Jenna - Your ambitions are admirable.
"But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? who aspires must down as low As high he soar'd, obnoxious first and last To basest things." -John Milton, Paradise LostPosts: 37 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Infrared, I'm not sure I agree with your view of the word "ambition." "Ambition" seems connote something less negative than "competition" does, and I wouldn't even say that "competition" is a particularly negative thing.
There's a difference between wanting to defeat people and knowing that you have to defeat people (for lack of a better phrase) in almost any field to succeed. For example, in a workplace environment, your promotion means that someone else did not get promoted. If you're a lawyer and you win your case, someone else lost theirs. I wouldn't characterize ambition as a "desire to defeat others" but rather as a desire to succeed. And I'm not saying that success should be desired at any cost, just that you should have a realistic understanding of the costs (to other people) of your success.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Milton was using a more dated definition for "ambition" than we would colloquially. I think in his case, ambition was synonymous with solicitation.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Celaeno, actually I think you are right about Milton. Maybe I'm being too old-fashioned in my definitions. It is true that being successful is concurrently causing unsuccessfulness for someone else. That's a fundamental law of life; there are very few truly symbiotic cases in which there's an equal give and take on both sides.
I think it's really a matter of your point of view when it comes to how you look at this one. Do we see half-full, half-empty, or realize that it's always both and there's different times to go with one or the other.
Posts: 37 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Sorry! Didn't have your words of wisdom to work with, and decided not to toss cultures into this fray.
Posts: 37 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I'm usually pretty comfortable with the status quo, but Treso tends to get these absurd dreams he just insists on pursuing... and ends up getting us both in a mess. Is that what ambition is? Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:Nor will my kids ever win a medal in the Olympics, because the sacrifices of family time to get that good are not worth it to me. I'm impressed by those who are that good, but really I pity those like the Russian skater who had to leave home at age 11 to move somewhere else to train - and leave his parents behind. I'm way too "ambitious" to let that happen to my family.
So if your kids desperately want to be olympic figure skaters, have the talent to be you'll stop them? You'll stop them from acheiving their dreams?
I'm very ambitious. But not in the normal "I want power, I want money" sense. I have a very specific goal that I want to accomplish in my lifetime and I'm aiming my life toward accomplishing it.
I want to see the human race off into space. I want to see us become well established in our solar system and get well on our way to colonizing other solar systems. To that end I'm currently majoring in Physics and Computer Science and am planning on going to grad school in Aerospace Engineering.
But that goal aside I'm not too ambitious in other things. I don't much care how much money I have, long as I have enough to live on. I'd like to have a family and kids someday, but if it gets in the way of goal #1 then it won't happen.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I have only enough vision to fill up a small living room.
My only ambition is to start my own psychology practice in some small town and have two children with a woman I love.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Dec 2005
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I'm ambitious, but I don't have the drive to carry through. I want to write, I want to be published, and I want my musical to be performed on broadway. But I don't have the drive to finish what I'm working on and seriously get it pushed to be published, or bought on broadway.
There's a ton of things I want to do and want to be, and that I think I could do, and could be, but ultimately I'm too afraid to pick ONE thing and waste my life pursuing it, so I'll take the somewhat easier career path.
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