Rainesford Stauffer's new book All the Gold Stars was highlighted in "Off the Clock", a review-essay last month in the NYT by Emma Goldberg, who observes:

Stauffer traces the history of the term “ambition,” how it shifted from being seen as a vice (synonymous with soliciting votes for office in ancient Rome) to a virtue (associated with serving God and country, through work). Then she asks whether we can be ambitious about life outside our careers, including in how we parent, take care of friends, get to know neighbors or even just play. She captures, too, the moments when people realize there’s a cost to spending time only on work: when a young woman learns that the company to which she’s devoted 40 to 50 hours every week won’t give her adequate leave to be with her sick mother; when another woman grasps that her self-worth is so bound up with her job performance that she has allowed her relationship to become a casualty of her professional stress.

All the Gold Stars describes the author's own problems, perhaps in a bit too much digressive detail. Stauffer's bottom line, however, buried on pps 255ff, is worth pondering:

... Rather than landing on a single new definition of ambition, I found a stratosphere of everything I missed when I thought ambition was only one thing.

I'm ambitious about being a friend. My goal is to follow up with friends like I follow up with pitches. My motivation is to become someone on whom others depend, who listens, who shows up, not when it's convenient but when it's needed.^*

I'm ambitious about imagination. My goal is to move away from what I know I can get right and sit in everything I've been too scared to try. My motivation is to not edit my imagination down to what I would change about my life, my dreams, or my circumstances, but rather, what I can see even beyond them.

I'm ambitious about interdependence. My goal is to contribute: to mutual aid groups and folks doing good work in my area, to care I provide my communities and friends. My motivation is that to care for others, I have to practice asking for care myself.

I'm ambitous about this pause. Not the future I can envision; not the deadline I've met. This second, the only one I get for sure.

... wonderful thoughts!

And an optimistic mindfulness-footnote: perhaps it's possible, although doubtless difficult, to do this important work – integrating Community, Acceptance, and Awareness – within a conventional job context. Not everyone can afford to flee The System, even partially. Bills must be paid, kids must be raised. The table doesn't set itself, the dishes don't wash themselves. Yet there's hope for self-actualization and insight, even in the hardest circumstances. At least one must hope so!

^*Echoing the classic words of Colossus in Deadpool 2: "This is what friends do. They show up! Not when convenient or easy. When hard."

(cf Plenty of Time (2009-03-09), Every Moment is an Opportunity (2009-03-24), Dimensionless and Therefore Infinite (2010-02-03), Mindfulness for Beginners (2013-07-18), Enlightenment Is Not (2015-07-06), Moments of Mindfulness (2016-09-15), What Friends Do (2019-11-26), ...) - ^z - 2023-07-06