Part Three
Another term often conflated with want is ambition. However, I interpret ambition as the effort someone thinks is worth putting into achieving their goal. With that said, if this someone is cognizant of the potential differences between what they want and what they’re willing to do to get it, perhaps this opens the door to discovering their internal value judgment on the want they possess. Not all wants are equal. Which might explain how just because I really want something doesn’t mean I will necessarily focus my ambition towards achieving that want.
Again let’s take my personal experience for example. I want magic to be real, possibly more than I want anything in this universe, and that is saying something. More specifically I want personal, unfettered access to said magic. The obstacle I face is its very nature of being impossible. An outright show of ambition towards that goal might look like an image of some of these other mystics that have deluded themselves that they are all important, and that their very breath is a form of miracle. No. I want the real stuff. I want the kind of magic that burns my blood and breaks physics through sheer will. I watch these new age Wiccans casting rhyming spells, not understanding the power of mantra, not understanding their reality is hung on a perspective near equivalent to faith. They don’t realize they lose much of their credibility outside the smallest of circles that will echo chamber them to ever higher self-importance. They don’t want magic; they want power.
Here I have to split my thoughts a little for I have two important comments to make from this and I don’t want this paper to entirely lose sight of this example as I will be relying on it again later. But first we continue with the limitations of ambition.
I can know my kind of magic is impossible and still want it. By being aware that my individual efforts are futile in altering this universe to my whims I have the opportunity to reevaluate my efforts, my ambition, and compare it to other wants I possess, such as appearing more socially acceptable. Publicly making a fool of myself gains me neither magic nor standing, while practicing more futile efforts only in private provides the opportunity to satisfy my want for both. Is my ambition less than these other witches for choosing a different path? Is it less for being shared among two interests? Does the one want limit my ambition for the other?
Perhaps.
There are two things I think of when it comes to the term ambition: people that viciously move themselves into higher and higher positions of power; but also people that have no ambition. Where does the will to live fit in for this second group? What does happiness and satisfaction look like to each of these groups? Do they have wants? I’ve heard that often those in high positions find themselves with some amount of impostor syndrome, working to the bone to quiet the fear inside that they don’t belong. Is quelling a fear the same as achieving a want? Is it possible that some goals, like career and success, are placed so high in our minds that it is hard to believe it when we’ve actually reached the summit? That this can’t be the end because it happened too soon? Likewise, I wonder about people that have the bar intentionally set so low they have no goals. Mostly I wonder about what they feel about the rest of their lives and any achievements they make along the way. I used to think I sat under this category, my want for magic not a sufficient goal for this lifetime to consider myself working towards a real goal. I scared one of my friends from high school when I mentioned this thought. Her fear stuck with me. It wasn’t the only thing I’d said to her that scared her. I both felt confused by her reactions and I fed on them. I hadn’t realized the latter about myself at the time, but it probably did help me learn more about my interest in writing later on. I learned I liked moving people. Emotionally. Mentally.
So it wasn’t truly that I had nothing to live towards, rather I didn’t have the energy to put effort into reaching those achievements at the time. I was, and in some ways still am, oddly terrified of having an effect on the world around me. I’m afraid people will remember me and that in remembering me will make me live longer than my already lengthy current lot. I’m afraid that if I affect anything around me in some real way that it will curse the universe with some sort of inherent wrongness. The funny thing is that one of my biggest nightmares used to be me trying to do something while knowing I was too insignificant, too human, too scared, and too incompetent to complete the task. My dream would repeat the very instance of me trying and failing over and over and over again, and I had to watch myself forcibly steer the loop to an iteration where failure wasn’t so complete, or wake up. Living sometimes feels like the moment just before the loop starts, especially when I’m about to do something with someone else’s attention on me. Like taking my driver’s test. Failing those three times felt exactly like failure in my dreams.
The Quiet Mirror 
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