I have a persistent daydream of me in the future, with my arms raised against the backdrop of a large American flag. It’s a campaign rally, and there’s a crowd. I can hear them, and I can see me. I can see my smile—how happy I look. How everything seems like it makes sense. It has become a guiding star for my future. When I feel discouraged, or I feel myself meandering, I think about that image. When I succeed, and I feel like I’m inching closer to this dream, I feel euphoric. I feel like I have been chosen to lead and bring the America that I know exists. For a very brief moment it feels as if President Charlie Andrade—arms hoisted in celebration—is in front of me.
If I were to be honest, no part of me is more important to my sense of self than my ambition. My belief that I can do more, on a bigger scale with more eyes watching me, provides an enormous layer of protection against self-doubt. Without ambition, I don’t think I would do most of what I do today. It requires a level of faith that you are, against all odds, truly meant to do more than what you come from.
Ambition, as it exists in American culture, is both virtuous and singular. Unlike certain feelings like jealousy or joy, ambition spreads across one’s sense of self. There are cruel ambitious people just as there are kind ambitious people—with few similarities outside of their want for the ever-evasive “more.” In America, we reward ambition and risk-takers with an enormous opportunity to fail. Just look at our venture capital community—an industry willing to lose millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars on nothing more than a charismatic founder and a good-on-paper idea. Our country has, I would argue, largely for the best, embraced the idea that ambitious people carry a fire inside them that cannot be either enflamed or extinguished by anyone else.
In this way, ambition is also a very lonely emotion. To be proudly ambitious invites you onto a stage you often feel you didn’t ask for. To start with, some percentage of the population will always resent you for chasing your future with defiant optimism. Their insecurity can be plainly evident, but the feeling of being “other” is still powerful, and I believe a major reason that many young people are not outwardly ambitious is because of this ostracizing. At the same time, another part of your world will treat your ambition with a cartoonish valor—like a tragic hero in a play they are watching from offstage. It’s almost as if your belief in yourself has been commoditized, and your success is in some way seen not as a reflection of your own ability but as another’s ability to see it. Both are difficult, but inevitable, in the pursuit of one’s imagined future.
Overcoming these feelings is something I’m just beginning to understand and adapt to. I’ve never felt that my political aspirations are a reflection of some inner need to provide myself with a nicer future. I live an extraordinarily pleasant and privileged life as it stands, and outside of a few luxuries, I don’t believe I would find much satisfaction by using my ambition to enrich myself with dollars and diamonds. Rather, I have come to view my ambition as a tool to provide those I love with the life they deserve.
We all know people who have spent their lives toiling away at a career they hate, just to see their already wealthy life grow ever wealthier. We see in their eyes the lack of meaning, and in their smiles the lack of joy. Careerism in this light has entered their soul like a virus, latching onto the supposed virtue of ambition to advance itself through the mind. This ambition of self, rather than of soul, can easily become one’s way of being, inside and outside the workplace.
If you want to harness ambition in a way that is both everlasting and actually fulfilling, the solution is to recognize your life as a foundation for others. In my case, I view my political aspirations as a real way to help make the lives of those I know and love—my family, friends, and partner—and those I love but do not know—my fellow Americans—better. I’m not afraid to say that helping others makes me feel better about myself. We should be comfortable admitting that giving is a symbiotic act. Otherwise, we will chase self-aggrandizement without fail, under the false belief that we are not truly deserving or capable of virtuous giving.
Hopefully one day that daydream will become a reality. I believe it will, and I continue to spend my days working toward that dream. If I’m wrong, I will still have lived a life pursuant to a fundamental kindness—one that allows me to provide and lead outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It will all, as it always has, be for those who have supported me. That is where true ambition really lies.
