Ambition

Ambition.  What fuels it?  Contemplating this question, I have been noticing that people who feel inadequate and small on the inside often tend to try extra hard to look and live big on the outside?  Attempting to fill an inner void with outer bling.  Living large, decorating themselves with accolades and shiny knickknacks.  Polishing the image of what success is supposed to look like.  Admired and worshiped by so many.  Masters at following the template sold to us by society and taught in our schools.  A good template in some ways, but who does it serve?  The economy or humanity?  A template about success and not about happiness.  Two very different things.  The problem is that we’re taught that the first is the way to the second.  But that isn’t how it works.  Happiness is always an inside job.  It is born from a place of contentment and confidence.  Confidence in our abilities.  Confidence in life itself.  Confidence that things will be OK at the end of the day even if they don’t match how we think things should be.  Confidence that comes  from a place of knowing.  Knowing that we are already enough.  Real confidence.  Confidence that doesn’t need measurable proof.  Confidence that is silent, modest, humble, non-competitive, calm and never angry.  Lately my attention has moved to the people in the background.  They’re the ones who inspire me.  Seemingly unambitious, deep-down they’re the ones beaming with true confidence.  And only now am I beginning to understand that’s where true happiness comes from…