My big questions usually slip out abruptly. They sneak up like the night train and blow their horn two meters from your house.

I'm blunt like that. 

Usually it's a few seconds worth of pondering here or there, that just blows out in pressure cooker speech.

"What do you think about ambition?"

"What do you mean?" asks dad. 

"Is it wrong that I'm not ambitious? People say that I have a lot of potential to impact OT. I have a lot of skills for it. I see my peers steering themselves towards impressive things. The NIH's Scientist program, a pediatric OT residency, the emerging leaders program. I have friends that have said that the expect me to be the president of AOTA, because I'm articulate and a critical thinker. I don't want to do any of those things, though. I want to work as a clinician, or maybe a professor, and have time to sew and read and relax."

My dad knows something about ambition. He was a young flame. He spent his high school summers at Cornell and Columbia, taking organic chemistry etc with the big kids, before gaining admission to a six year medical program.
Because of all that, he also knows that sometimes ambition burns.
Sometimes things aren't as they seem, or things change, and for 22 years straight you work from 7am til 11pm seeing patients at the office and running to every hospital. You are on-call on the weekends, and see patients then, too.
This was in the pre-historic, pre-hospitalist era. 

"Well, it's not about living up to your potential in one area. It's about living up to your potential in things that are important to you. And sometimes that evolves. I believe if it's not something that's important to you..."

"You won't do a great job at it! I know. Me too. I always wish that people didn't take on leadership roles unless they feel that they're the best person for the job. I avoid that. I chose to chair the cultural committee at school and loved it instead of being the OT organization chair because, while I think that I could have been elected, I just can drop the ball on staying on top of minutia."

What is the inner flame? Because mine is not to start an OT school in Malawi (I have a classmate doing that). It's not to be important on the national OT scene, even though I certainly believe that I could work to be. Those are all fine things to do, but they're just not my passions. They're not my interests, and I want to be led by conviction and purpose. I like working with young adults. I like doing OT. I like writing. 

So is it wrong not to seek to Be Important when You Could Be? 

No.

I think that it's more important to want to do something that you believe is important...not to do something to be important. 

Hasn't that been the fundamental belief behind almost everything that I've ever done?

When I slept 0 hours in 48 and 16 hours over 6 days, 

And ironed my sweater with a hair straightener and drove in a torrent of rain to a downtown hotel to present my research...mixed into a program with MDs and PhDs, wanting to do my mentor proud, and wanting to not blow up at a national conference. 

It was at a stoplight when I realized that in the frenetic preparation for this 90 minute talk, I had gotten away from everything that I had believed over the past year. 

The whole thing that drew me to that project was that I wanted to do this for the kids. I wanted to give them a second shot at education, provide them support, and see if they would take it
Because I believe that education is the way out, and I understand that sometimes kids need you to come alongside them. 

That was the moment that I realized that this presentation wasn't about me.
I was making it about me, but it wasn't.
All I had to do was to tell those kids' stories.

A weight
lifted. 

It was only because I was so relaxed, only because I was talking about what I knew, that I believe that I was able to thread and transition slides so well together that I had re-arranged so many times the days and hours before, and never once practiced all the way though. I spoke from memory. I told a few stories. People laughed and sat erect as we shared passionately about programs and ideas. 

Isn't it funny that ambition can make us forget our intentions? Ambition can kill passion. Slaughtered passion limits our achievement and our effectiveness. 

This is all a merry-go-round way of saying that no, I don't think that there's anything wrong with not having ambition. There's nothing wrong with waiting for PURPOSE to come. There's nothing wrong with the ambition to be whole, to help those in our daily lives, and to take pride in that, because caring for those around us in and of itself is an achievement. 

And ambition for ambition's sake, for a title, for glory, for respect, is a shell of the full belly that comes from action driven by conviction. 

That's when we are sated. 

So chase your wish-dreams to better this world, regardless of how small they seem, and I will chase mine.