One Thought

Some people just aren’t ambitious.

Take Michael Skrzypek. The San Francisco resident was covered in the Chronicle last year. For five years, Skrzypek worked 10 weeks per year, earning enough money to finance the remaining 42.

How’d he swing that? Basically, he got lucky. He fell into the arrangement–working with legal trial presentation software–mostly due to happenstance.

So what did Skrzypek do during his 42 free weeks? Not a whole lot. He says:

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I don’t have an answer for what I did on an average day. Most days, I got up and wondered what I would do. … A lot of days I wouldn’t get out of bed. I’d just read. I liked to joke that I was the only person in the United States who read the New Yorker every week, cover to cover.

Skrzypek’s friends observed his inaction and made suggestions. One suggested he take up bluegrass guitar. Another suggested he read the complete works of Dostoevsky. Others wanted him to write short stories or volunteer at a homeless shelter.

Skrzypek wasn’t interested. He held firm: He wasn’t going to do anything; he didn’t need to be productive to be worthwhile. His desire for achievement was nil.

Skrzypek has since taken a full-time job, but only because doing nothing was getting boring. He says, “I don’t have that kind of ambition that makes people anxious or competitive.” He’s just not an ambitious person.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Though Skrzypek was torn apart by SFGate commenters, I have nothing against him. Not everyone needs to work hard or focus on achievement. I’m happy he’s living as he sees fit.

But what about you? Are you ambitious? Most people wouldn’t say they are. Ambition’s a dirty word. It brings to mind greed, competition, and workaholism. It’s seen as something you focus on if you’ve got your priorities wrong. It also means hard work: You can’t claim to be ambitious if you’re resting on your laurels. If you say you’re ambitious but you’re not doing much, you’re basically admitting you’re lazy. 

That’s why far more people are ambitious than will admit it to themselves. They think ambition’s bad. They don’t want to see themselves as lazy.

How do I know this is true? Because of envy.

Envy’s a powerful emotion. We feel it when we want something someone else has: respect, experience, accomplishment, whatever. It’s a very strong–and true–form of desire.

Envy is often hard to detect because it masquerades as anger, hatred, and resentment. Rather than acknowledging envy directly, we focus negative energy on its cause. We come up with reasons–rationalizations–to make ourselves feel better. We become righteously indignant.

I’ve seen this happen in my own life. When I was in college and a struggling beginner guitar player, I tended to resent other musicians on campus. I thought their music was lousy, I thought they were pretentious — I just didn’t like them.

I now realize those feelings were caused mostly by envy. I don’t look back now and think, “Wow, those guys were brilliant!” but I do see that my feelings were more a reflection of who I was than who they were. Their music was no threat to me. My resentment was unwarranted. It was caused by my frustration with where I was as a musician.

This is a common pattern. It’s why anger and resentment–and therefore envy–point to ambition. It’s why if you feel anger and resentment you could be ambitious without knowing it. (Incidentally, this is the focus of a recent post of Jennifer McGuiggan’s at The Word Cellar, “Turn Envy into Inspiration.” Check it out — it’s good.)

So what about ambition? Isn’t it bad? I don’t think so: Ambition’s only a motivating force. It’s one that drives us to want to do remarkable things, to stand out in some way. Many amazing things have been done in the name of ambition. And of course, some awful things–and some merely pathetic or pointless ones–have also been done in its name. Ambition by itself is neither good nor bad. 

I know I’m ambitious. I want to be interesting and remarkable. I know I’m much better off acknowledging that than hiding in a cloud of resentment.

That’s why I’ve chosen to focus my energy on conscientious ambition. Ambition doesn’t have to be about accumulating vast quantities of money or attaining some narcissistic ideal. Conscientious ambition is focusing your ambitious tendencies on making the world a better place. It’s doing things like working to right wrongs, improve people’s quality of life, and produce things of beauty.

Ambition can be a great thing. Do you have it?