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America is obsessed with ambition. Is it time
to redefine it?
Ambition doesn’t exist outside cultural forces that shape it.
Could we reframe it for the collective good?

Rainesford Stauffer
Tue 6 Jun 2023 12.00 BST
I
n the first few months of the pandemic, when my physical and mental
health seemed to be deteriorating faster than I could patchwork fixes
for them, I wrote in my journal. “I feel emptied out, like when I shake
a tote and gum wrappers and two nickels and half-finished chapstick
fall out,” I scrawled in sloppy cursive I can barely make out now. “I am my
own life’s leftovers.”

While the circumstances of a deadly pandemic exacerbated it, the feeling

that I had nothing left to give had trailed me for awhile, showing up as I
worked from the bathroom floor when my body felt as if it was giving way, or
when I spent too much time awake at night, wondering what felt worth it any
more.

After years of being driven by ambition, I was convinced I’d used mine up.

A few years later, my body and my brain still fight with me, but I see it
through a different lens now. Letting go of the idea that ambition was my
saving grace meant, in part, giving myself actual grace – a concept I only
digested after two years of reporting on the concept of ambition, and how it
shapes us. I spent countless hours talking to people of all different ages and
circumstances about their own relationships to ambition, and one beautiful
thing emerged: people were increasingly using the intention, care and drive
ambition required in a manner that was collective, not competitive.

A
mbition doesn’t exist outside cultural and institutional forces
that help shape it, which is part of the reason it gets argued in
both directions: people are told they are too ambitious, too
persistent and too wanting; or people are told they aren’t
ambitious enough, as if one can out-ambition or out-work their
circumstances, an individual solution to structural problems.

Whose ambition is encouraged is also deeply connected to gender, race and

class. Ambition can be considered both a privilege (in who has the energy
and time to think about their aspirations) and a tool for capitalism, tethering
worth to output.

All efforts shared The stories I’ve heard are equally complex. A 27-
the intention and year-old student and parent in Maryland told me
drive of ambition; all she’d never been thought of as ambitious or hard-
required not turning working as a young adult because she had her son
required not turning working as a young adult because she had her son
inward but reaching in high school – despite earning her associate’s
outward degree and pursuing her bachelor’s, securing
housing for herself and her child, and working. A
63-year-old who just moved to New England to be
closer to family described owing $200 a month for health insurance and not
making enough to live on, underscoring how, with a threadbare social safety
net, just meeting one’s basic needs is seen as something to be achieved,
rather than a necessity.

As much as hearing stories about ambition upholding overwork and

exploitation infuriated me, it didn’t surprise me. But what delighted me was
hearing how people were imagining a different ambition. Far from
individualistic striving, people described reshaping their ambition into
something that stretched beyond them.

The psychologist Dr Meag-gan O’Reilly told me about seeing ambition as

falling under a “condition of worth” – the idea that we must do something in
order to be valuable. It’s almost like “achieve X, or else”, she explained,
meaning that love, a sense of worth, and support could be withdrawn if we
don’t perform in a certain way. This differed, she added, from ambition based
on an intrinsic yearning, one that could be nurtured by our communities,
with support and love that wouldn’t disappear if we missed the mark.

While reporting, I found ambition nurtured by community. I listened to

workers describe unionizing their workplace as a form of both collectivity
and imagination for something better. I talked to people who described
shifting away from self-reliance and toward tending to each other by
advocating for care infrastructure. They pointed me towards their mutual aid
initiatives, describing how common spaces shape care and create
friendships. They talked about having fun, from participating in a
community orchestra to a “rolling hang” with their local mutual aid group,
which involves having a designated spot in the park where they converge,
people coming in and out.

All efforts shared the intention and drive of ambition; all

required not turning inward to unearth the last embers of self-motivation,
but rather reaching outward.

s my understanding of ambition has shifted, so have markers that

A
s my understanding of ambition has shifted, so have markers that
represent it. Right now, ambition is my cats zipping across the
room, fighting over their stuffed moose. It’s the call log on my
phone, filled with conversations with friends, mentees and
mentors. It’s when I close my laptop and go do something that isn’t about me
at all.

When I asked O’Reilly about making ambition more collective, she

mentioned how challenging it was in a culture steeped in fierce
individualism. It was a matter of shifting the questions, she said: “Instead of
‘what do I want to achieve?’ or ‘what problem do I want to solve?’, perhaps,
‘whom can I serve?’ and ‘how can we make life better for others?’”

Some might struggle to classify these questions as “ambitious”. But what if

they were?

That’s what I hope for: more care for each other, more resources to do it,
more reshaping what ambition can be.

All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive, by
Rainesford Stauffer, is out now