Posted by
Mary Hogan on Sunday, June 22, 2008 10:00:00 PM
People send their children to college hoping to inspire ambition. But what is ambition? Is ambition life itself? I don't think so. Ambition is just another hunger, a craving. What is this craving, is it real in any sense at all?
Young people crave power, old people crave the lost youth they now see as spent. What is the present? Doesn't it all have to do with self? Rav Dessler says that ambition is merely the stimulus which the Almighty has implanted in his creatures in order to remind them to do the things necessary to keep themselves alive.
You cannot satiate the hunger for money or power, because that hunger is based on constant satisfaction which gets old after a while. Physical desires are the same, the more a person attempts to satisfy these physical desires the more he wants and the desire intensifies.
A person starts out on a path wanting perhaps one hundred dollars. When gets this, he wants more, say double, then double, then double ad infinitim. It is the carrot game, the craving of the yetzer hara, the evil inclination.
This person has to fight harder and harder to get that ever increasing sum of his desire. Doesn't he know full well that the culmination is only more work and more desire? The Rabbis say that no man leaves this world with half his desires fulfilled (Koheles Rabbah 1:34).
R' Dessler tells a story about a pack of revenous wolves running around searching for food. They found a small carcass and they jumped on it with ferocity, but they were unable to eat because each attack his neighbor. They bit and fought each other untill they were wounded and bleeding. Finally one was successful but as he ran away you could see the blood trail of his wounds. Was it worth it? What had they all gained from their desire?
R' Dessler ponders the hunger of man who craves material things to the point where he is willing to give up his life and his family. The victory is hollow, the ambition is an illusion. The life is a waste.
R' Dessler states that the hungry one is the most miserable of all Hashem's creations.
Solomon said that the truly rich are those who appreciate their lot.