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You deserve a big hug

One of my fencing coaches told me today, “You’re one of the people on the fencing team who deserves a big hug at the end of the season for your hard work.”

I appreciated this comment. I appreciated it far more than I expected. What I appreciated was not the implicit compliment (nice as that is), but that someone had noticed the time, effort, and thought I put into the team and into improving my own fencing.

Back to ambition

If you take a look at my recent rambling on ambition, you’ll find I think it’s up to you to achieve what you want to achieve. You’re the only person you’ll have to blame if you’re not satisfied with how you’ve lived your life, be it a sport that you’d like to excel at, a dream job you want to have, a novel you plan to write. The only person who can get you the places you want to go is you.

I call this drive and determination to do the work needed to do the things I want to do ambition. A friend of mine, though, noted that “ambition” often has negative connotations. It’s associated with evil overlords and corporate weasels. And “work,” that’s associated with external imposition. It’s something to be avoided. This comment made me think: Why do I approach work (and ambition) differently?

Fencing coaches give good advice

The most prominent influencing factor that came to mind was my first fencing coach, George Platt. He was a cheerful, positive man, and he explained the difference between achieving success and achieving excellence to all his fencers.

Success, he said, is how good you are in relation to the rest of the world. Success is job promotions and high salaries and winning medals in competitions. Excellence is how good you are in relation to how good you individually can be. Achieving excellence is being the best you can be, regardless of how good anyone else is. And that should be your goal: being the best you can be. Doing what you enjoy and putting effort into the things that are important to you.

Most of us, we’ll never be The Best at anything. The hard part is not letting failure to achieve success dissuade us from continuing to pursue excellence. It’s easy to be discouraged. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “I work, but no one else does and no one appreciates it, so I’m going to stop.” It’s easy to lose motivation. So in a world increasingly full of lazy slackers, we need to acknowledge the people who do work hard, no matter what results they garner. That acknowledgment may be exactly what they need to keep going.

I don’t understand people who don’t have ambition.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about my summer plans. I’m currently applying for a variety of internships and summer research programs. Another student happened to be listening in, and he said, I don’t want to do anything with my summer.

I can understand the desire for a lazy summer. I find free time (which I inevitably fill with my own projects and activities) just as appealing as the next person. But this guy, he’s a senior in college. What’s he going to do, bum off his parents when he graduates? That’ll look great on his resume:

Coach Potato – Hometown, A State. June 2010 – August 2010.
Sat on couch, wasted time on the internet, smoked pot, watched TV, ate chips, played video games.

But it doesn’t make sense to me for a person who wants to succeed and excel to not work towards that goal. Sure, maybe not everyone has high-flung aspirations. But everyone wants to do something. If you could be paid to be a professional coach potato, then absolutely, spend the summer doing that. But if you want to do research, if you want to be a lawyer, if you want to be a film director or work a high-salary job in the pharmaceutical industry… If you know what kind of experience you’ll need to get that dream job… why aren’t you looking for the opportunities that will let you achieve what you want to achieve?

It’s your life, do what you want

In the end, all that matters is whether you’re satisfied with how you’ve lived your life. Me, I know that the only person I’ll have to blame if I’m not satisfied is me. It doesn’t make sense to not put in time, effort, and thought.

Conclusion: The world is full of stupid, lazy, and boring people. If you don’t fall in one of those categories, I applaud you.