Sticking it to the Cult of Ambition
Postal Portals 03
This was written in response to The Languishing Hole, a letter from Spencer Chang to me. This is the third letter in our series of correspondence, Postal Portals.
Spencer,
Reading your writing over the last six months or so, I’ve noticed a distinct shift in your worldview. Around the time I recommended you read Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, your need to be ‘unstuck’ burst onto the pages you wrote. You wrote an anguished short piece of auto-fiction, drilled into readers’ psyche with your second-person narrative and made clear change was underway in your mind. Now, in your last letter, I can see a resolution. Now, you’re satisfied. You’ve diagnosed a problem, reflected, and leaped forward.
Your unsticking mirrors a current news event: Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from the French Open. Kelli María Korducki reported in the NYTimes last week about Osaka’s withdrawal, framing it as a ‘revolt against the cult of ambition.’ I see your becoming unstuck as an analog to this revolt. You and Osaka both seek to reject undue and unsolicited social pressure, to reframe your goals, and frankly, your lives. Of course, being a biracial woman and international tennis star facing grueling and biased media pressure is a bit different than your life, but you’re both revolting against the cult of ambition at different scales.
I’m settling back in from my trip now, and that means I too face a confrontation with the cult of ambition: I’m celebrating one year at my first job out of college. In this year I’ve taken on responsibility for various components of the software I work on, and moving quickly upward at a software company as an engineer often comes with questions about ambition, namely, whether or not I want to pursue management. I spoke with my friend Melanie about this and when I asked this question, expressing hesitation about moving away from a technical role, she interjected ‘but you’re too smart not to go into management.’
She has a point. The cult of ambition drives us to make career choices that prioritize salary and growth. Pursuing management requires commitment and constant decision making pressure, a notable mental price to pay for ambition and growth. Sometimes I think we forget that the ‘work’ and ‘life’ in ‘work-life balance’ coexist in one universe. I subscribe to the idea that will-power and decision making are finite resources in a given time period. Making decisions continuously at work, even with a good balance between work and life, takes a toll on what can be done after work.
You and I talk often about our hobbies and interests outside of work, but sometimes I wonder how the cult of ambition weighs on our personal, even private, lives. We’re both ameatuer home mixologists and baristas I’d say, and when I think about these hobbies and the joy they bring me, sometimes a sneaking doubt, asking what is it all for, pervades my thoughts. Ambition drives me to pursue more - better coffee, better cocktails, more knowledge, more skill, but is it ever enough?
To reject the cult of ambition is to accept that being stuck, albeit in a different sense than you operationalize, is not just an acceptable state, but a necessary one. Maybe being satisfied is a better way to frame that, like how your satisfaction at being unstuck implies a rejection of ambition and an acceptance that you won’t meet goals being set by society, and that you don’t need to meet these goals.
After my vacation, I think I can say I’m feeling unstuck too. A mental reset paired with reflection has set me up to be satisfied with my hobbies and work, at least for now. How long this satisfaction will last remains to be seen. The cult of ambition doesn’t make it easy to leave.
Yours,
Avery