Ambition has been on my mind lately. I believe it ebbs and flows, both personally within an individual’s heart, and collectively, when undercurrents of change erode contentment’s shores permanently altering the landscape.
Collective ambition is swelling through our politics right now.
So much so that it feels as if the ocean’s level itself is rising emboldened with new energy that could either alter the landscape as we’ve never seen before or crash spectacularly far from shore leaving just a ripple as its wake.
We have dual waves simultaneously surging toward the shore: one sparked by the Presidential primaries, the other by vengeance following the President’s acquittal.
Careers are being made as others are ended based on the harsh reality that to the victors go the spoils. You can see the waves forming, if you look toward the horizon, without knowing exactly how they’ll break.
During the Iowa Democratic Caucus debacle, when news broke that no results were coming that night, I texted a friend:
“The worst part is you know there is some former state senator in rural Iowa scheming right now to take control of the party only to become the most hated person in the state when he loses the first-in-the-nation status forever. Such are the perils of ambition.”
I didn’t know this to be true, but I sensed it. I was almost right: the job didn’t go to a retired state senator, it went to a retiring state representative.
Ambition’s funny that way. Like the ocean, it’s never still; each part affects another transferring energy until it either crests or breaks re-emerging later as something new that’s similar, but not quite identical, to what it was before.
I see this in my personal ambitions too. It was reflected this week in many ways.
For starters, I was one of over 500,000 people to enter my child in the Gerber spokesbaby search trying to win a $25,000 scholarship.
I’m not a math guy so I’m simply basing my entry on the fact that my daughter is the cutest baby who’s ever lived, which means we’re sure to win.
Also this week, there was the Erma Bombeck humor essay contest, which I similarly expected to win in advance of the conference I’ll attend this spring. Yet, like all but one who entered, I did not win.
I rarely win the things I think I have shot at it, I’m far better at dumb luck.
I was reminded of that this week when my college’s alumni magazine Ithaca Forever showed up in my mailbox with a nearly year-old alumni note about the National Society of Newspaper Columnists humor award I won last year.
It’s strange being broadcast as a winner while nursing a defeat.
Nevertheless, ambition persists, sometimes wisely and sometimes because it just doesn’t know how to quit.
My personal ambition continuously surprises me when it forms. That’s why I almost always stand in defense of trying.
The last way my ambition manifested itself this week surprised me the most – I’m applying to be the Town Poet Laureate for Wallingford, Connecticut, where I live.
My candidacy is a longshot, for sure.
The poems I’ll submit are simple – meant for newborns and expectant parents, whereas a more typical Connecticut poem is written for maple farmers looking to commune with nature because their fathers never hugged them.
But I know from several public readings that my poems resonate in a really impactful way. So I’ll put myself out there looking for another way to further my mission of building human connections with my words; mining my own life experiences for shared truths that help us all feel more appreciated and understood.
In an era of ever-increasing social anxiety and isolation, this is my cause. The work provides me with great personal meaning and joy.
I don’t suspect I’ll get the two-year gig (unpaid, of course), but I’m excited to try, floating in my ambition’s comforting, familiar, ebb and flow.
No matter how our ambitions break (collectively or personally), with time, they will return fueled by an energy as cyclical as the ocean’s tides.
I don’t know this to be true, but I sense it. If you look far enough toward the horizon, you may already see the next wave forming.
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