It surprises me more and more how much my environment dictates my thoughts and actions. When I want quiet, living in quiet is a balm. When, however, I want culture, art, and frenetic energy, living in quiet is dystopian. Same goes for ambition. NYC, LA, Paris, and a few others cities are what they are for no other reason but that they provide a playground for ambitious types to meet each other and be ambitious in the same sandbox. This isn’t to confuse riches or finance with ambition. Ambition is a thing unto itself. Both a cause and an effect at the same time. Flowing through your bloodstream, demanding immediate action. Many times, when you’re meditating and you’re told to quiet the mind, you have to essentially ensure this tiger is temporarily asleep. But ambition is pacing around the quiet. It’s circling and circling and leering and waiting until the right moment to pounce. It can very much bide it’s time without issue or complaint. It’s a life force unto itself. It makes you feel alive and that aliveness stems from the physical vibration of the thing. The lack of this is death. Not the lack of more or better, but the inability to challenge oneself. To simply grow old and complacent.
It is utterly ridiculous and counterproductive to quiet the thing that lets you feel most alive. Instead of quieting it, you must ride it. You need not identify it or grapple with it. You must harness it and use it until the next stop, and the one after that. There is a reason that people return to Paris for centuries seeking “something.” It is that energy that they must tap into to know that they are still on this earth. No level of quiet will bring that peace or euphoria.
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