Ambition – Good or Bad
Ambition is another name for man’s desire to do well, to hear himself praised and to attain fame and immortality. It is man’s struggle against his mortal existence. It would be foolish to deny the importance of ambition for it is the fuel needed for success and fame. Men have sacrificed some immediate gain, health and at times even wealth for the sake of satisfying their ambitions. Each man’s ambition may be different from that of his neighbor. Somebody may want to become a musician, another a general, still another a painter. It may not always be the ambition to win wealth and fame. At times it may only be a non-materialist ambition to do a job well. But though ambitions may very in kind, the quality of ambition cannot differ. It needs determination, devotion and at times even ruthlessness.
Dick Wittington became Lord Mayor of London from being a poor orphan boy. Napoleon. the son of a Corsican lawyer, became the supreme dictator and Emperor of France. Other men have risen to fame from similar modest beginnings and have been of great service to their country. Thomas Alwa Edison struggled hard to get patents for his inventions and put in plenty of hard work to realize his ambition. Marconi. in spite of his personal wealth, had to struggle. Scientists like Madam Curie are people who have used their ambition correctly and fruitfully and have not allowed it to deteriorate into greed. There are other people whose greatness and courage at once come to the mind. The great Indian leader Mohanlal Gandhi is one such. His ambition was to create in fellow men mutual love. His ambition was to free his country through a non-violent revolution and he never allowed any personal gain or loss to come in his way.
In fact good men who have not allowed ambition to get an upper hand strike one as being so modest that one does not normally associate the word ambition with them, primarily because their ambition has been for others and not for their limited selves. Albert Schweitzer is one such example. It would be wrong to say that these people had no ambition for without it they would not have made any effort. All constructive effort is motivated by ambition whether for self or for others. Patriots, writers, soldiers, painters and men in other walks of life are all motivated by it. Only the extremely servile and the extremely complacent are not affected by it.
There is, however, a very narrow line between ambition and greed. And some people, if they happen to meet with rapid success, are prone to lose their bearings. When ambition becomes free from all social and moral responsibility, it results in the destruction of man’s integrity. History provides endless examples of this. The story of Dr. Faust told by Marlowe confirms this. Many men who began well and rose from humble beginnings lost their moorings and headed towards self-destruction. They are examples of men who put personal gain before social gain and whose ambition became perverted. Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” illustrates this point. Many great men have aided their own destruction by refusing to recognize the legitimate limits of ambition. The first lapse of mankind became possible when ambition entered Eve’s breast. Like the first fall of mankind, ambition is double-edged; if on the one hand it is the beginning of a world of knowledge and experience, on the other, it brings suffering and death. Ambition, as Alexander Pope wrote…. “first sprung from your bless’d abode; the glorious fault of angels and of gods”.
