My 2 year old son is at the age where he has discovered that he can have independent thoughts. That, coupled with independent locomotion, has turned him into an avid climber. Despite our repeated corrective comments regarding climbing, whether it be up the refrigerator door, or up the basement door, or up the counter, he has a hard time listening. I think he has inherited the ambitious gene from both sides of his family.
Unfortunately, he has not quite grasped the concept of the idea that even if he can do something, doesn't mean he should do something. But I shouldn't be so hard on him. This is a concept to which most of us adults don't even adhere.
We seem to have this drive marinated into us to rise to the top of our careers, to be the best we can be at our work. Our society has this sort of giddy school girl adoration for such people. Take, for example, two cyber-security conferences I have been to, both of which former FBI cybercrime professionals headlined. They were introduced, including all of their years of experience in fighting crime, as well as their notoriety as speakers. We all gawked at their stories, as well as their skills in hacking into "secure" systems even as they presented.
However, I noticed one very subtle thing about both of them. Neither of them wore wedding rings. Perhaps this was a choice, perhaps they never had interest in marriage and family. But perhaps their story was one of two other scenarios. The first being that they had always wanted to have a family, but their career was taking off, they were spending lots of time at the office, and the opportunities kept slipping away from them until they got fewer and rarer. The second scenario would be much more tragic, that they already had a marriage and possibly even kids, but that they never had enough time for both them and work, and the wife, overwhelmed and disheartened by the reality of an absentee husband, decided she and the kids would be better off on their own, or take their chances in possibly finding another whose priorities were more in line with theirs.
I thought to myself that no matter how sexy their job seemed, rising to that prominence was not for me. It did not fall in line with my priorities of having time at the end of the day, and on weekends for those I love, as well as the other passions and hobbies I have (like writing). :-) That is me, of course. I know that it's very possible that this type of life was maybe all they ever wanted. And in that case, they can consider themselves successful.
But I would say that this sort of self-success mirror of world success is more elusive than we care to think. The world may care about seeing certain things out of people and making judgments based upon that, but it is only a spectator for the "best of" moments of that person's life. That person, on the other hand must live every moment of their own life, including the holes that that pinnacle they have built has created. They therefore should take actions because they want them, and because those actions lead to consequences complementary to their values. It's a hard thing to sort out, and no one is perfect at it, but I hope that those who have forgone ambition for the sake of the less showcase-able aspects of life do not let their satisfaction be squelched by some outside voice saying they could have done better.
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