Ambition
I appear to have lost all ambition. If you told me that I would exist and live more or less as I am now for the rest of my life then I would be fine with that. At the moment. None of my desires are “burning”, I don’t need to impress, there is no mission that I feel impelled to complete. I am happy being, content to live whilst enjoying conversation, love, friendship, etc. Of course, you might argue that if I was more ambitious and achieved more in life I might be able to have better conversation, love, and friendship but I doubt it is worth the aggravation.
I like the taoist phrase, wu wei, meaning ‘to act without doing’. It implies a wonderful effortlessness, when there is no barrier between yourself and what you are doing. Ambition is a barrier, it gets in the way. It is far better to be contented than full of strife and strivings.
Goals are a contract with the future, without them we worry that we will end up disappointed at having wasted time. Goals help us to to focus our energies towards things that we consider more worthy than others. Everyone has goals, even if they are not consciously stated. What do those people who say they want nothing want? Are they conservatives who want everything to remain the same? Or do they really aspire towards having a mind like water, reacting appropriately to every stone or rock dropped in, then reverting to placid stillness.
There have been quietists in the past. People who have taken an attitude of non-intervention in all things. I sympathise with them, but wonder if is it responsible to do nothing when the possibility of global ecological collapse seems so close?