Ambition can be a dangerous fixation on a set future that drives us to achieve a goal in a way that diminishes our humanity and hurts the people around us. Ambition that is not generous, creative and loving is often ugly and immature.
There is a real tension I reckon between being ambitious and being mediocre. Some of my Helensburgh running buddies recently participated in the UTA. A series of running events in the Blue Mountains in Sydney. They ran 22k, 50k and even 100k events. I am in awe of the strength of body and character required for such phenomenal achievements. However running with these guys is so much about relationship and the generous friendships and care that the group offers. But if you are serious about running a 50 or 100k event like this and your only agenda is to be kind and supportive to the group, running with the old fat guy who cannot keep up and will never help you achieve this goal.
I’ve been part of brass bands with the salvos and its always a tension for the leaders to try to get the band to a great standard and at the same time be a compassionate friendship group that accommodates average players that may hold the group back. But if excellence and high standards are your ambition, then sacking poor players and halfhearted contributors is the way to go. Big business and corporations have a reputation of stomping over anything and anyone who stands in the way of their ten year strategic plan for success.
So how do we hold this tension in our career, our marriages and our social lives? Surely it’s not a bad thing to strive for excellence, but as the saying goes, it’s hard to fly like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys.
I guess it depends on what you are wanting to achieve If winning and building an empire is important to you, then stepping on a few heads will be necessary, but if building community and accepting people who are doing it tough or have certain frailties and weaknesses is the agenda, then loving people will trump the program objectives every time.
The bible warns us to “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
For Salvos, I think this can be an extra challenge as we do life with so many people who have experienced trauma and hardship. We often find our church services are not filled with beautiful or rich people. We often set up programs and find our volunteers are inconsistent and complicated.
We sometimes look at big churches or companies that have heaps of money, popularity and success and wonder why the work we do so often seems small and insignificant.
I was recently asked what legacy I hoped to leave and found myself saying it was all about leaving a trail of people who have been loved and valued more than they believed was possible who in turn love others.
So I wonder if we are ambitious enough. Do we settle for small when we should be aiming for big. Well I guess it depends what the end game is.
I love the story of a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.
The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
It’s dangerous to be so set and fixated on an ambitious goal that we lose our capacity for creativity and transformation in the deep and mysterious places of the soul. Like a caterpillar metamorphosing from its cocoon into a spectacular butterfly, it is a process that cannot be rushed and it is natural and beautiful without manipulation.
Let’s find contentment just where we are. Maybe the things we value most are already within reach.
Bless ya,
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