Ambition

There are some people we ought to be violent with.

They’re the shady characters who hang around our homes, creep about our workplaces, and stalk us while we train.

But nobody wants to be violent with these shady characters anymore. Culture wants to legitimize their deceit, validate their wicked schemes. Culture doesn’t want to tell these shady characters to fuck off.

I do.

I want to give them names. I want to call them out. I want them to see my eyes and know that they don’t have me fooled.

I want to dismember their spirits.

I want to make them bleed.

You already know them. You might know them secretly, afraid for your friends and family to find out. You might brag about knowing them on Instagram, hungry for pity and attention. Maybe you think you know them, but they’ve tricked you, they’re playing you.

Maybe their black claws are deep in your mind.

Anxiety, restlessness, and fear are mine. I’m anxious for my present: material possessions and status paint my ambitions black. Restlessness is my constant engagement in the digital world. Fear sleeps next to me, haunting my nighttime with worries of never getting what I want or missing some boat I don’t even have a ticket for.

These are my shady characters, the ghouls of my ambition.

But it’s not ambition I need to rid myself of.

The wide, deep grave I’m digging is for the fiends mocking me away from true ambition.

And what is true ambition?

It’s not tangible. It’s not digital. It’s not unconscious.

It’s alive.

Your ambition is the complex of mental and emotional desires you’ve created for yourself based on your values and beliefs. It’s your roots, the reasons you first picked up a weapon, a barbell or put on a gi, the reasons you still show up every day.

You want to investigate the shadows, perhaps, and know what enemies stalk you. You want to prepare for them, for the hardship of life. You want to know your strength and see it develop.

You want to grapple with those shady fucking characters.

I sure do. My hands are strong. My knife is sharp.

With your iron pursuits grounded by the roots of your beginning, you cannot fail. Don’t fantasize about anything but pulling more weight. Don’t seek approval from mortal humans; seek approval only from your own conscience. Never imagine what you’re missing out on when you’ve left so many footprints on the path leading toward your own greatness.

That’s how you dismember their spirits.

That’s how you make them bleed.

That’s why you’re here.

If your hands are on the barbell, if you’re putting gloves on, if you just landed in someone’s guard, if you just squeezed the trigger: breathe in this fight, experience this combat, and remember what got you started on this path.

Those shady characters want you to fantasize about the end of the story you’re still writing.

Your story is right fucking now.

Grip the barbell. Hit the bag.

Reset. Breathe.

Take aim.

Never Fucking Quit.