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Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Ambition” Complete Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Ambition

 Essay No. 01

Happy is the land that has no history, for history is a record of the battles and wars waged by kings and emperors to gratify their vaulting ambitions. In their lust for more lands and riches, they spread havoc and devastation, here, there, and everywhere. There is hardly a crime against humanity which they did not commit, hardly a sin that did not stain their conscience. Their overmastering ambition over-rode all considerations of morality and ethics. From Satan, who rebelled against God, to the twentieth-century dictators who dreamt of world conquest, it has been a story of tyranny and torture on the one hand and sorrow and suffering on the other.

The Bible tells us how the ambition of Lucifer created a rift among the angels. The rebel angels led by Lucifer hurdled defiance at Jehovah who hurdled stem headlong into the bottomless pit of hell. Thence begins the story of human woe, suffering and unrest, and all that. It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, who hide the truth in their hearts, and like jugglers, show another thing in their months to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their interest, and put on a good face where there is no corresponding goodwill. Satan was the first that practiced falsehood under a saintly show and the motive force was ambition.

The Mahabharata war, which disturbed the peace of this vast sub-continent and even some of the neighboring countries, was brought about by the inordinate ambition of Duryodhana. From his very childhood, he had dreamt of kingship. With this end in view, he practiced every type of deceit and cruelty on the Pandavas, lawful heirs to the throne. He tried to burn them alive and when they escaped, inveighed them into a gambling boat in which he cheated them out of all their possessions by loaded dice, and thus compelled them to retire into a forest. Even after all the hard conditions of exile had been fulfilled, he refused to give them their share of the kingdom, precipitating the Mahabharata war which not only rocked the entire country but also left it weak and emaciated for centuries. Even after 5,000 years, India has not regained the vigor and virility which it possessed then when the young men of this land went to different shores as ambassadors of Indian culture. The love of ambition can devastate lands and destroy peace.

It was again the ambition of Alexander to conquer the world that induced him to begin his campaigns from Macedonia and carry fire and sword into different lands—Troy and Persia and India. H.G. Wells has vividly described the frenzied action of Alexander after he had conquered Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Empire. “He ordered every horse and mule in Persia to be shorn and pulled down the battlements of the neighboring cities. He caused all the adults to be massacred as to a sacrifice”. His behavior in India was no better, though the valor of Porus saved this country from devastation. When Alexander died, the world empire he had snatched and held in his hands, as a child might snatch and hold a precious vase, fell apart and was shattered to pieces. Chaos and confusion were supervened everywhere. The subsequent story is one of a barbaric autocracy in confusion. Everywhere the provincial rulers set up for themselves the small kingdoms of their own. There was a welter of crime and treachery which made these peaceful lands look like gaping hell. Ambition, thy name is anarchy!

The mantle of Alexander fell on Julius Caesar. History tells us that Alexander had planned the conquest of Carthage and Rome and the complete subjugation of India but his death had shattered these schemes. Equally ambitious was Julius Caesar, who is credited with the intention of the systematic conquest of the whole of Europe. He was to have marched upon Germany, says Plutarch, and then eastward. He began by defeating Pompey, his rival, and becoming the master of the entire Roman world. He was then elected the Dictator for Life. This was the monarchy, elected life-monarchy. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Like Alexander before him, his head seems to have been turned by the King-God tradition. He was looked upon as invincible. “I came, I saw, I conquered”, he is recorded to have said after his invasion of Britain. Possessed by the demon of ambition, he embarked on his campaigns of conquest, leaving a trail of bloodshed, death, and destruction. The bird of peace flew from place to place and failed to find any twig or branch to perch on. At last, this ambitious man met his end at the hands of his own friends and comrades. Shakespeare, in his play, Julius Caesar, has put these beautiful words in the mouth of Brutus, a dear friend of Caesar. “As Caesar I loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There are tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor, and death for his ambition”.

The sixteenth-century witnessed the ambitious designs of Philip of Spain. He wanted more territories and more gold. Ship-loads of American gold flowed into Spain and that further stimulated his appetite. Into the British seas, he sent his invincible Armada to smash the British naval power. But a terrific storm blew and the Armada was dashed to pieces. The ambitious king found his pride humbled and his power diminished.

But from all these events, ambitious men have learned nothing and unlearnt nothing. In the eighteenth century, Napoleon of France came riding on the crest of the French Revolution. His little, imitative imagination was full of the dream of being Caesar once again. He was scheming to make himself a real emperor with a crown upon his head, and all his rivals and school-fellows and friends at his feet. The figure he makes in history is one of the most incredible self-conceit and of a grandiose aping of Alexander and Caesar which would be purely comic if it were not caked over with human blood. He went on dealing death and destruction until, as Victor Huge said in his tremendous way, “God was bored”, and he has kicked aside into a corner to pass his days explaining how very clever his worst blunder had been, prowling about the dismal hot island of St. Helena, shooting birds and squabbling meanly with an underbred jailor who failed to show him proper respect.

The crazy-headed man with his megalomania set the whole of Europe ablaze. If the monarchs shivered in their shoes, the common man exclaimed with Browning “Who knows but that the world may end tonight?” Europe became a big battlefield and peace shuddered in some obscure lonely island in the Pacific.

Like the Phoenix, the ambitious ruler comes again to life after being burnt to ashes. The twentieth century must have its own drama of ambition of peace. Hitler in Germany entertained the ambition of Deutschland ubber (Liles”, the German or the Nordic race dominating the whole of Europe. He began by squeezing the Jews out of Germany. He then alerted the countries of Europe that the war was coming. For ten years, the whole of Europe was in a state of tension. Fear and nervousness were writ large in every place. Then in 1933 began the process of gradual conquest of Rhineland, Saar, and Czechoslovakia. Then came the full-scale war which lasted full six years, spreading destruction and death. There is no counting the cost in terms of human loss and tears which the ambition of this man spelled to the world.

Man is born with ambition embedded in him and, to fulfill his ambition, he cares a fig for the peace and tranquility of others. The territorial ambitions of the countries are always spoiling international peace today, making Third World War possible. Once there is a start, there will be no end. The curbing down of the ambition is necessary to bring peace.

 

Ambition

 Essay No. 02

The expression “Ambition’, is rather vague but, in a nutshell, ambition comprises what we want to get, what we want to achieve, and want to become in life.

Ambition is a great propelling force and a guiding star for an individual, to do what he/she likes to do and to achieve what he/she wishes to. It is quite a truth that, ambition must be within all of us, to keep us steering ahead, in our journey of life. However, this same ambition which is, on the one hand, a guiding force, becomes on the other, a road to doom also. This is because, sometimes, our ambitions take to such unknown heights and fly across unknown areas and domains and then boomerang on us. This happens because in our ambition at times, we also lose track of realities, capacities, and having no sensitivity to them, fly beyond all precincts of reason. We seem to be desiring or having ambitions equivalent to reaching or handling the moon, and when we do this we get dumped against disappointment and frustration.

In order to steer us ahead, ambition should also be backed with some right reasoning and a sense of practicality, for example, if any human starts having an ambition that, he should live in the happy realms of human beings and, at the same time, also fly high and free in the high skies like a bird, the ambition is much too broad-based and too demanding, and so, is bound to crash with a loud thud. Let us be more practical when we set our ambitions and goals, then we will see more success and less disappointment.

It is this very overplaying of ambition in this modern era that is leading to traumatic ends of people. Let us see how petty and foolish we can be most of the time when we desire things. Take the simple case of a modern housewife. She visits her industrialist friend and sees plush carpets and grand decor in her house. This sets her thinking as to why she should not aspire to have all this. She desires to have rich decor when the family income cannot even buy her a good sofa set. If she sets the industrialists’ house as her goal and ambition she is bound to face frustration, as, she should know that, she will never be able to afford that standard of living and style.

The next very common scene for setting ambition is when parents see other children scoring good marks, and their own ward not doing as well, they set high ideals, goals, and ambitions for their ward and themselves. In this, it seems that little do the parents realize that all children, or, I’d rather say that all humans have their own optimum LQ, and so each individual has a limit to his/her achievements. When these parents set very high goals for their children, the children often land up as complete failures. This, in turn, takes them to drug addiction to get away from their worries of failures. All this disappointment in the lives of the children and the parents I’d say is just because, ambition is stretched too far and beyond the approaches of the child. This farfetched extension of ambition leads us nowhere, except to the doors of unhappiness.

The picture is the same dismal on the financial front wherein we see a continuous rat race for making money more money and still more money. For this also, the motive force is ambition. It may sometimes goad individuals towards improvement but mostly it is seen to lead to disaster. This is because, in this modern world of today, we have lost all sense of decency and moral code, we just want to achieve whatever others have, not because we really want it but just because others have it. Does this not sound ridiculous, yes it does.

In the same way, going on a higher plane and moving up from individual’s to the ambition of a country, here also there have to be practical goals set, looking into the background and general standard of the country. If this is not done, disaster is a foregone conclusion. For example, if a developing country like India for instance becomes so ambitious so as to acquire equality with the U.S.A. in all its spheres. India is I’d say living in a Fool’s Paradise, and inviting doom. India must remember that progress just like all other things start from small beginnings and can be achieved only in a planned manner. We, on the contrary, are only flying high and giving way to our ambitions of being as if a progressed country, like the U.S.A., and the results are for all of us to see. India, in fulfillment of its high flown ambitions, has got neck-deep in financial debts, while its teeming millions are not getting even one square meal a day. Is this not being over-ambitious?

I’d say whether it be an individual or a country, there has to be some logic and semblance of practicability in our ambitions. Ambitions must not be mere daydreaming, for such ambitions are sure to remain unfulfilled and result in frustration, unhappiness, and then crime. It is wonderful and correct to have ambition as, this is the driving force that pushes us to work towards our goal but, at the same time, ambition should not propel us so far that, we climb high on the wings of ambition and then crash down and become dust.

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