“What Happened to Your Ambition?” - @home
Vasto, Italy
It’s Monday morning. I’ve enjoyed the day’s first first caffè on the terrace and am now greeting the flowers. It’s a beautiful, sunny start to the new week. I must give the plants some more water. But before I do, I want another espresso so I go back inside, singing to the music that’s playing in the kitchen.
We always have music on at home. Waking up, I randomly select an album among my favorites. This morning it was the soundtrack of Evita. I love musicals! While I’m fiddling with the coffee machine, I realize what I’m singing.
“Eva, beware your ambition…” Hmm, that’s interesting. I’ve known these songs by heart since I was a teenager, but I never stopped to analyze the lyrics.
Ambition. That word, again. A word featured in numerous conversations over the last year, after I sold the hotel and jumped out of the business world. A word at the center of many, many questions.
“So, what’s next? You are so ambitious that you’ve surely got something new lined up.”
“How long is your sabbatical? An ambitious woman like you cannot just hang around and do nothing.”
“You always were so career oriented! What happened to your ambition?”
Indeed, what happened to me and my ambition?
Looking back a year ago
Once the sales contract was signed, I felt relieved but disoriented. The first months passed in a daze. Even if we had planned and agreed on everything with my husband, I felt a bit lost. This was no sabbatical, this was “my new life”, focused on my passions and hobbies. The lifestyle I had desired, dreamed of, designed, worked for. I got what I wanted, a few years earlier than originally calculated and still, I was not exhilarated.
I had no clear answers, the least to myself.
Looking back on it now that a year has passed, it’s obvious. I was hit by a classic identity crisis. So stereotypical that it feels slightly embarrassing now. The usual existential doubts, the “human being vs. human doing” questions. Since the late 80’s, I had always worked or studied, or both, side by side. Last summer was the first ever that I was not doing either. Who was I, if I wasn’t working, being productive?
After a while, I stopped thinking and asking questions. That’s when the answers came.
Cherries are my favorite fruit and now is the season!
My ambition did not disappear. It transformed.
I am still ambitious, very much so. But my ambition has taken a different form and targets.
I’m ambitious about our relationship. Umberto is the center of my little universe. It took me decades to understand this: jobs come and go, careers rise and fall, diplomas and titles sound fantastic initially but become irrelevant over time. True love remains. The problem is, it is hard to encounter, you have to be lucky. We got lucky for some reason. So I cherish this love more than anything.
I want to be a good wife, partner, lover, friend. Better than the version of me who was always stressed, tired and tense. I want our home to be a beautiful place, figuratively and literally.
I’m ambitious about learning and creating. This time, not to show the world anything, not to gain another degree or title. Not to prove anything to myself either, but to feed my curiosity and creativity.
I want to be a well-rounded person who not only studies theory but can roll up her sleeves and take action. My days at home are filled with reading, exercising, language learning, listening to podcasts, playing the piano, sewing, writing, researching and organizing the next trips - and of course, plenty of cooking, cleaning and laundry. (How is all of this “just hanging around and doing nothing”, by the way?)
To counterbalance, sometimes I remain quiet, close my eyes and smell the flowers. Or taste fresh cherries. Or listen to the waves on the beach. When I travel, I often just sit quietly without thinking or reading, doing nothing. The empty space invites in some of the best ideas.
I’m ambitious about traveling. I was born a vagabond. I love traveling. Not in the sense of just “liking it a lot”. No, I’ve learned that I’m my truest self when I’m on the road.
This world is an amazing place and I want to explore as much of it as possible. When I organize our shared trips, I put in extra effort to create unforgettable experiences.
My current reading list. Fiction, biographies, non-fiction, in five different languages. Just to feed my curiosity, for no other ambition whatsoever!
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with ambition
Deep in my thoughts, I go to my piano and pick out the Evita songbook. I play the first song and pause in the middle of the second one. That’s the lyric that struck me earlier.
"Eva, beware your ambition.
It's hungry and cold, can't be controlled, will run wild.
This in a man is danger enough, but you are a woman,
not even a woman, not very much more than a child."
I pay no attention to the inevitable sexism here, inherent in Eva Peron’s era. It’s not the point. What the song lyric is trying to say: be careful with your ambition.
There’s nothing wrong about ambition as such. On the contrary, ambition gives us energy and direction, and helps us persist during difficult times. I would not be who and where I am now if I had not been an ambitious young woman. This world would be a whole lot less developed, if it hadn’t been for people with big dreams, ambition and drive.
But ambition can also be dangerous if it’s excessive or directed at the wrong things. It can make you unpleasant to work and live with, and damage relationships. It can make you chronically dissatisfied. It can make you insensitive to feedback and paradoxically, set you up for subsequent failure. It can burn you out and ruin your health. And it can turn you bitter, if one day you realize you’ve been chasing somebody else’s dreams, not your own ambition.
In brief, ambition is not good or bad by default. It depends.
One of my favorite fragrances, star jasmine, gorgeous! These plants are abundant in our condo, blooming in mid/late May.
Luckily, aging helps!
There’s nothing unique or revolutionary in what I’ve been going through. It is quite typical that our ambitions and aspirations evolve, especially once we’ve reached mid-life. For many of us, aging brings an important shift of focus, from seeking success to a quest for inner peace and deeper meaning. We begin to see more clearly what is important in life and what is not. Maybe this happens once we’ve lost the illusion of youth, of being eternal.
Experience also compels us to be more realistic. The world of business and work has changed fundamentally since my generation entered the workforce, forcing us to re-think our priorities. It was a whole different game in the 90’s, and we played it differently.
If I was young again in today’s world, I would have to ask myself:
“Would you let your happiness depend on the whims of the corporate world and the ever more unpredictable global economy?”
“So, what’s next?”
Now, I no longer have difficulties answering the question. My head and heart are clear.
Next? There’s tomorrow. But before that, I’ve got an entire day to live today.
And as for ambition:
I want to keep living a good life. I want to keep learning about love and life, about the world. So that one day, I’ll look in the mirror and see a wise woman. That’s my highest ambition.
*****
Over the summer months, I spend a lot of time on the beach in Vasto Marina, mostly reading.
Sunday selfie with Umbe on the beach.