Welcome to negative capability, a weekly journaling prompt intended to encourage deliberate thinking in order to cultivate joy, emailed every Sunday. These prompts are meant for my 절친 only,but I am making them available for all my subscribers during the month of January, a time when we are most often reflecting on our past selves and what we want for the coming year. If you find these prompts useful or inspiring, why not consider subscribing?
What is ambition? What is your ambition? Where does it come from?
When I was little, when I was still acquiring English alongside Korean, I used to think 욕심 (greed) was the same thing as ambition. I’m not sure why my child mind made this connection, but I think I thought that greed was necessary in order to have ambition.
And I suppose a part of me still feels this way. There is a grasping sensation to the word 욕심, or at least, that’s how the word makes me feel. Maybe this is why I say I’m not a particularly ambitious person, because I feel as though it somehow makes me a greedy one.
But is that true? That I’m not ambitious, I mean. I do want for the intangible things, which some would call ambitious. Yet I’m not really motivated to work hard to achieve them; instead I am merely content to saunter vaguely in that direction as I go about my art.
The more I journal, the more I realize how much work is part of the definition of so many things. So I suppose, to me, ambition is desire + labor. And maybe a little bit of greed.
Ambition
Ambition
Ambition
🗣️ Listen below.
Welcome to negative capability, a weekly journaling prompt intended to encourage deliberate thinking in order to cultivate joy, emailed every Sunday. These prompts are meant for my 절친 only, but I am making them available for all my subscribers during the month of January, a time when we are most often reflecting on our past selves and what we want for the coming year. If you find these prompts useful or inspiring, why not consider subscribing?
What is ambition? What is your ambition? Where does it come from?
When I was little, when I was still acquiring English alongside Korean, I used to think 욕심 (greed) was the same thing as ambition. I’m not sure why my child mind made this connection, but I think I thought that greed was necessary in order to have ambition.
And I suppose a part of me still feels this way. There is a grasping sensation to the word 욕심, or at least, that’s how the word makes me feel. Maybe this is why I say I’m not a particularly ambitious person, because I feel as though it somehow makes me a greedy one.
But is that true? That I’m not ambitious, I mean. I do want for the intangible things, which some would call ambitious. Yet I’m not really motivated to work hard to achieve them; instead I am merely content to saunter vaguely in that direction as I go about my art.
The more I journal, the more I realize how much work is part of the definition of so many things. So I suppose, to me, ambition is desire + labor. And maybe a little bit of greed.