Four hundred years ago, Sir Walter Raleigh, British explorer extraordinaire, successful courtier and poet, fancied by Queen Elizabeth the 1st, suffered a crisis of conscience. He loved the Queen and she liked him too, but not being royal caused him much anguish regarding any kind of romantic liaison between them.
In a moment of whimsy and heartache, he used his diamond ring to etch the following lovesick statement on his window pane: "Fain (willingly) would I climb, yet fear I to fall." The Queen, seeming a little impatient with his dithering and obvious lack of confidence, wrote underneath, "If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all"!
Much closer to our own age, nearly 120 years ago, another poet, Scotsman Robert Browning, was more forthright: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
These two examples illustrated a marked difference in the degree of love ambition the two men possessed. Despite his great courage elsewhere as an adventurer, Raleigh felt inadequate because all he could see was the possibility of failing, not the thrill of the chase or the glory of winning. Browning's ambition was boundless, without false barriers, and gave him love and immortality.
Your reaction to the title of this article is likely to depend upon your gender. In our modern times ambition is an ambiguous concept which lends itself easily to contrasting gender applications and sexist malice. For example, men seem more comfortable in accepting ambition as a natural and expected part of their life. Ambition is considered an essential ingredient for the dominant male in his quest for success. He is likely to be seen as a rising star and potential high achiever; one to watch and nurture. A woman similarly endowed is often regarded as 'pushy', 'aggressive' or 'butch', words that are not exactly complimentary and are deliberately meant to imply an absence of the more 'softer' feminine traits.
Negative Labels
For women, too much ambition is perceived as a negative attribute, suggesting notions of self-fulfilment and importance way above their 'station' in their bid to compete with men. In view of this perspective, many females are often labelled 'ambitious' and 'very intelligent' at unsuccessful interviews, the words suddenly assuming a derogatory nuance because of their female context.
This attitude could have much to do with the general understanding of the word itself. Ambition is often confused with the need for power, but that is only one small aspect of it. Ambition is actually tied to realising the extent of our capabilities while coming to terms with our innermost desires. Personal potential cannot be achieved by doing nothing and hanging back. We have to constantly go forward, testing ourselves to the limit at every opportunity, pushing against individual boundaries, to ensure complete self-fulfilment.
Much frustration is caused by people who are ignorant of their own potential and, for numerous reasons, are secretly afraid to find out. Like Raleigh, they are too hung up on that possible failure instead of concentrating on the experience itself and the gains to be had. In this way, their growth is stunted from the very beginning. Others might give an air of nonchalance, and contemptuous disdain for their ambitions, while masking secret, unfulfilled, frustrating desires.
At some point, we have all come in contact with the seemingly quiet type who gets on with his or her job and wishes for nothing else, outwardly disdaining material things or promotion, emphasising how 'happy' they are in what they are doing and need nothing else. Or they might detach themselves from ambitious goals. Such people appear to have no need to join the rat race, having rejected the cultural and societal norms around them. Instead, they keep their distance from anything which even hints at advancement for its own sake.
Well, that's what we are supposed to see, but look again closely because there is no such free spirit.
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