Our generation is an ambitious one. We have been conditioned to crave wealth. We have more opportunities than ever before to attain said wealth. Because of this, our lives have been dedicated to cash. Someone is always grinding, hustling, or showing off their goals (which are usually luxurious and expensive). Ambition doesn't necessarily have to look like this. According to dictionary.com:
Ambition: eagerly desirous of achieving or obtaining success, power, wealth, a specific goal, etc.
Ambition can be a desire for just about anything, but desire sometimes goes by another name:
Greed: excessively or inordinately desirous of wealth, profit, etc.
By definition, being ambitious and being greedy have few differences. The main difference lies in the element of excess. When ambition becomes excessive, it becomes greed. This makes distinguishing these two qualities very difficult because we have not agreed upon how much money is too much to want. It's likely that our culture has no limit. For those of us who were not taught at a young age to love money by watching our parents stress over it, we were taught later by mainstream media. Check the Billboard Top 100 list. The list is never complete without a few songs solely about money.
Many may see nothing wrong with wanting to be filthy rich and striving for it. Our society agrees that this is much more acceptable than wanting to be filthy rich without a willingness to strive for it. When you think about it, though, the people that are most admired and influential did not become so because they were determined to be rich. Were Jesus, Muhammad, Plato, Aristotle, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Einstein and Bill Gates dreaming of money bags when they became some of the most influential people to walk the earth? Bill Gates only happened to get rich after he completed his goal of transforming an entire industry and still is also known for his philanthropic work.
We can set our sights on things much greater than some spending money. We know we can't take money to the grave, yet no one ever has philanthropy goals or charity goals.You might want money so your boys can eat, but you could use the rest to feed starving children. After you buy your mom a house, you could fight homelessness in your hometown. You may be riding in a matte black Lamborghini while someone will never own shoes to walk in. All of the money that is made beyond what you absolutely need—the excess—could be used to help those who didn't have the same opportunities that you may have had. Imagine how much we could change if we adjusted our goals a little. Instead of being determined to have money, why not be determined to be influential? Having money may be necessary to complete this, but being influential is likely to take you so much further than simply having cash.
People who think of success as material wealth aren't just greedy, they are also limiting themselves immensely. They get their money, houses, etc, and they've either reached a "self actualization" of sorts or they realize they are capable of so much more. If we thought of success more qualitatively than quantitatively, we might strive to change other things (beyond our account balances) that we see as unacceptable. Instead of success being an amount of anything, we could shift its connotation to be more of a state of happiness and contentment not only for ourselves but for the communities we care about.There are too many worthy causes for us to be passionate about to waste all of our goals on ourselves. Let's stop being greedy and make the world better by being ambitious.
