[00:02.96]024. Ambition [00:11.79]It is not difficult to imagine a world short of ambition. It would probably be a kinder world: without demands, [00:20.57]without abrasions, without disappointments. [00:24.36]People would have time for reflection. Such work as they did would not be for themselves but for the collective. [00:32.47]Competition would never enter in. Conflict would be eliminated, tension become a thing of the past. [00:40.23]The stress of creation would be at an end. Art would no longer be troubling, but purely celebratory in its functions. [00:50.61]The family would become superfluous as a social unit, [00:54.61]with all its former power for bringing about neurosis drained away. [01:00.19]Longevity would be increased, for fewer people would die of heart attack or stroke caused by tumultuous endeavor. [01:08.75]Anxiety would be extinct. Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart. [01:18.94]Ah, how unrelievedly boring life would be! [01:23.89]There is a strong view that holds that success is a myth, [01:28.15]and ambition therefore a sham. Does this mean that success does not really exist? [01:35.48]That achievement is at bottom empty? [01:39.27]That the efforts of men and women are of no significance alongside the force of movements and events? [01:46.80]Now not all success, obviously, is worth esteeming, nor all ambition worth cultivating. [01:55.66]Which are and which are not is something one soon enough learns on one’s own. [02:01.45]But even the most cynical secretly admit that success exists; that achievement counts for a great deal; [02:10.22]and that the true myth is that the actions of men and women are useless. [02:16.02]To believe otherwise is to take on a point of view that is likely to be deranging. [02:21.48]It is, in its implications, to remove all motive for competence, interest in attainment, and regard for posterity. [02:31.58]We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, [02:40.92]the country of our birth or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. [02:46.19]We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. [02:54.12]But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, [03:03.46]honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or in drift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. [03:14.68]We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. [03:22.72]But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, [03:28.45]these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. [03:35.37]And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.In the end, forming our own destiny is what ambition is about.

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