📘 Part 3: Ambitions

This episode's vocabulary

Aspire to smth. - to have a strong hope to do or have something.

Detrimental (adj.) - causing harm or damage.

Vigilant (adj.) - always being careful to notice things, especially possible danger.

Lofty (adj.) - high.

Inevitable (adj.) - certain to happen and unable to be avoided or prevented.

Status quo (noun) - the present situation.

Listless (adj.) - having no energy and enthusiasm and unwilling to do anything needing effort.

Drift through life (phrase) - when you don’t have a plan.

Wholesome (adj.) - good for you, and likely to improve your life either physically, morally, or emotionally.

Dead weight (noun) - the heaviness of a person or object that cannot or does not move by itself.

Intact (adj.) - complete and in the original state.

Fragment (verb) - to break something into small parts or to be broken up in this way.

Coherent (adj.) - if an argument, set of ideas, or a plan is coherent, it is clear and carefully considered, and each part of it connects or follows in a natural or reasonable way.

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Questions and Answers

M: So, let's talk about ambitions and young people. What kinds of ambitions do young people often have in your country?

R: Well, they all seem to either aspire to greatness or at least have some career ambitions like becoming vets, or doctors or movie stars. I think this isn't so different from elsewhere in the West, though. That could be detrimental, though. A few people have burning desires to be husbands and fathers or mothers and wives, it seems by comparison.

M: Why is it good for young people to have ambitions?

R: It can be difficult to lead a life with unarticulated desires, actually, that can have some quite detrimental consequences because your life is sort of directionless.

M: Should parents help their children to decide what ambitions to follow?

R: Well, I don't see why they can't play a formative role. Though there's always this danger of parents seeking to live their lives through their children and sort of chase their dreams that way by forcing them to do things they would rather not. Assuming parents are vigilant against this sort of behavior, though. Then they can be quite useful in helping children articulate what they want to do. After all, who knows you better than your mom and dad.

M: Let's talk about being ambitious at work. Why are some people ambitious to take on higher positions at work?

R: I would imagine a higher salary and recognition and power are driving factors. But they might have lofty ideals that they want to promote or personal goals outside of those that I mentioned that they want to achieve.

M: Do you think it's good? Do you think it's like, good to have ambitious people in a team at work?

R: I think so as long as their vision isn't competing with that of the company that they work for.

M: But if their vision is competing, and if their ambitions are different from the organization of the company from the administration, is it then a negative thing?

R: Yeah, that will be that will be very detrimental. Definitely. Well, it's sort of inevitable, I would think, if they're at odds with the company's goals.

M: Are ambitious people always successful at work?

R: No, it's not enough to be ambitious, especially these days. You need to be able to convince people to join or support you in the pursuit of your goals, or at least get out of your way. And you also need the resources to achieve and sustain your ambition, or you'll need to abandon it otherwise.

M: Can sometimes people overdo with this, with their ambitions? And like, can they have too many ambitions?

R: Um, they might have one or two main ambitions, but they could have like sort of minor supporting ones, for example. I don't think it's possible for people to have like lots and lots of big ambitions in life, your brain just can't sustain the focus on multiple goals of that size for so long.

M: And do these ambitions help people in their lives?

R: I think so. Assuming that you've like set realistic goals for yourself, and you have planned a path to success, then yes. But if you haven't, then, of course, it's gonna be a mess.

M: Let's talk about the need for ambitious people. Why does the world need ambitious people?

R: Well, otherwise, we'd still be living in grass huts. People are dissatisfied with the status quo, or people who are dissatisfied with the status quo and longed to change it can move us forward in ways you never thought possible. And that's extremely useful for achieving anything outside of some sort of agrarian existence.

M: Is it true that someone who is not ambitious, is at a disadvantage in life?

R: Well, that will depend entirely on what you want from life, won't it? If you meet someone as listless as you are, and you drift through life together happily, then it might not be a disadvantage, provided that you're both wholesome people. Of course, if you're if you have ambitions, and you're matched up with someone who doesn't, and there's sort of a dead weight around you, then that's detrimental to you.

M: Society values ambition more than other qualities. What do you think?

R: Well, to be honest, it probably values a lack of ambition more than ambition itself these days if the status quo is to remain intact. I mean, in order to have a functioning society, you kind of need people to be moving in generally the same direction. So if you have people with multiple big competing goals, then that will just fragment things and could potentially fragment things quite badly. You can sort of see this in parts of the West, although it's not a completely lost cause yet where people fly in all sorts of different directions. There's not really one coherent vision of how the world should be. And that can have serious consequences further down the line if it starts to spread to every aspect of the society.

M: Rory, thank you very much for your ambitious answers, ambitious vocabulary and grammar. Ambitiously for a high score.

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