Point of View: Ambition
I’ve got to get beyond the birth-and-death thing, as my Zen book advises, though the good news is that my birthday is tomorrow and Mary is going to take me out to dinner.
When recently the subject of first loves came up, I told her that mine had tossed me over in the end because I had “no ambition.”
“That was what Mom and I always admired about you, that you had no ambition,” she said, “that you chose to go your own way.”
“Well, I do have ambition,” I said. “It’s just not the usual kind. For instance, I’m very ambitious to know what the chemical word for beet juice is. It’s a question in today’s crossword puzzle.”
Later, in the supermarket, happening to pick up a strawberry smoothie jar, I saw that one of its ingredients was pantothenic acid. “Pantothenic acid!” I said. “I think I’ve solved the crossword!”
“See, you do have ambition — you’re positively driven.”
“By you, most of the time, and now I’m burning with the ambition that you drive me home so I can see if it fits.”
Well, “pantothenic” was too long, nor was it right, though I learned it had something to do with a growth vitamin in the B group, as is found in yeast and molasses — reminders that one should lighten one’s spirits and go with the flow. I’d made an excellent error, then: You can’t always get what you waaant, but sometimes you find just what you knead. . . .
So, what have I learned by 75? Nothing, really, other than what I knew at 8 when, in sending postcards home from Camp Abnaki on the island of North Hero in Lake Champlain (a most beautiful camp, by the way), I habitually signed off with “Hope you’re feeling fine and having fun.” I hope you’re feeling fine and having fun. All of you.
Is that too much to hope for? Even so, it is a worthy ambition, it is mine; it is my goal, if you will.
All that you seek is within you, not outside you, my Zen books seem to say. Look no further. It’s always been there.
As I’ve said, I may never quite get it, it may always remain a puzzle, but there is serenity there, and the secret to world peace.