Not everyone is “ambitious”. Even those that are fall into two distinct categories. The first group we’ll call the “positively” ambitious. If you ask them what they would like to do they will tell you (in astonishing detail)Â and outline their plan to get there. They say things like “I want to be Lord Chancellor” or “I want my own advertising agency”; or “One day I’ll be a McDonalds Team Leader”; or “Since you are going to die anyway Mr Bond, let me explain to you exactly how I will force the governments of the West to tremble BWAHAHAHAHAHA”.
I am in the second group: the negatively ambitious. This is an even more loathsome group than the first (though we are less likely to be found stroking a long-haired cat with a black vinyl glove). We NA’s have no idea what we want to do but are haunted by a vague sense that we should be achieving something more and when our PA friends outline their plans to steal atomic warheads and blackmail the British Secret Service into giving them the power they crave, we go quiet and think “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that. Now I’m going to get to be his dorky sidekick at best”.
To sum it up in a phrase: “We’ve no idea where we want to go but we are terrified we are getting left behind”.
I have a number of astonishingly PA friends. Some of them have even begun to get where they have always planned to go. This should make them very very happy  and dammit some of them really are very very happy. Why isn’t God smiting these people? Others, however, are suffering.
Earlier this week P and I found ourselves sat in a dining room in the House of Commons trying to comfort a Member of Parliament who was nursing a broken heart. Now there was nothing unusual about the act itself – we deployed the standard technique we have honed to perfection: tell the truth emphatically while holding eye contact: “He’s an idiot for leaving you”; “I know he has had second, third and fourth thoughts”. Admittedly Penny is better at it and can veer from the truth when humanity demands it: “He’s not seeing anyone so far as I know”. I can be less fleet of foot: “Yes he is love, some veternarian he met while fencing … ARGH, excuse me, someone seems to be crushing my foot with a dress heel”.
What was flat-out surreal was the environment in which all this was happening. Our well-meant platitudes were delivered whilst a discreet and respectful waiter brought me a “heart-healthy” thai beef salad and the Thames ebbed past beneath the leaded windows. On the walls hallucinogenic heraldic wallpaper that only the Victorians could have conceived tugged my retinas back and forth giving me motion sickness. At the next table the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was entertaining a group of sycophants with witticisms about the Finance Bill and MPs all about us were quietly enjoying the thought that this was the last day of the Parliamentary term and they could get back to stuffing drug-soaked oranges in their mouths whilst auto-asphyxiating ; fancying pigeons or whatever else it is they like to do with their time off.
No-one is quite sure what caused the break up. It could have been the loneliness he endured when she was an MEP in Brussels. It could have been that she ran for Parliament when he had, in rather 17th century style, instructed her not to. It could have been the fear that he would end up as Denis Thatcher rather than Lord Chief Justice. Who knows? I love them both and it is heart-breaking to see either one unhappy. Between them they had greater and more specific ambitions than anyone (indeed any 100 people) I know and that ultimately seems to have been the death of the relationship.
We walked out past the stonework and tiles of the Central Lobby and, waving to the armed police with a “put the safety back on” friendliness, we put Westminster Abbey behind us and went searching for the car. Penny patted my arm and said “you’re not so bad” which I took to mean “sometimes it is good to be married to a man whose principal ambition is to find a really good dairy-free cake”.
drug-soaked oranges? fancying pigeons? I’m not sure what’s going on, but I like it.
I think you’re right about the division between PAs and NAs. I’m a PA and the Breakdancer is a NA. The way it seems to me is that the PAs can’t understand why the NAs can’t focus on a goal, while the NAs just hate the PAs for being so excited about what they want from life. Essentially it’s the divide between optimists and pessimists, but there are subtle differences. Many of the NAs I’ve spoken to actually want to have an ambition, and the pressure they place on themselves to have one makes them so unhappy and less likely to think of one. NAs should just chill out in my opinion and PAs should stop telling them what they think they should do.
Jess – the link “explains” it all.
Gamba – You’re right, it’s part of a sort of ambition recursiveness. We don’t know what we want save that we want to know what we want.
On the cake front, I’ve never tried them myself but my friend Chris absolutely adores these people
NA here.
Or, at least, I aspire to be an NA.
I will say that when I lived in a somewhat major cosmopolitan city, that alone made me feel as if I were accomplishing something just by walking past the Liberty Bell or the latest and greatest Asian Fusion restaurant.
Really. Just reading that you are having conversations in front of Westmister Abbey or along the Thames rings of “Jeez…at least he’s someplace physically noteworthy, if not, uhm, otherwise.”
Me? I’m negatively ambitious and being so around concrete strip malls and cow pastures. And not even moderately romantic cow pastures.
Hubster is definitely Na (is there an NA’s anonymous?) I suffer from FA (fantasy ambitions). I know I’d be really really good at wildly exciting and exotic things, like a Dance Movement Therapist based in Kauai, Hawaii, or an Anthropologist of Mythology in Tonga.
What about those of us who just aren’t ambitious and don’t really care? I think both menace and I fall into that category (which is probably dangerous for our financial future). I used to be NA, but I feel much better now.
Kate – Because that makes you amongst the very nicest people there are you get dealt with in the first sentence.
I’m with minks on the FA train! I LOVE to fantasize and have such incredible ideas. However, do I act on them? Well, not too many of them. I suck.
Huh? Cake? Where’s the cake? *looks around*
So my type A personality is not called PA. Interesting…
How have I never been here before? You are an AMAZING writer. Anyway, I am an easily influenced person – I am either PA or NA depending upon my surroundings. When I was working on my master’s degree at age 25, I was surrounded by 22 year-olds doing the same and I felt like a colossal failure so I made up this goal: I will be Dr. Teacher Lady before age 30. Or else.” Then, I moved to Hawaii, where all anyone cared about was the surf, and I was like, “School? Huh? Who cares? Pass me the poi and gimme another Mai Tai.”
Damn. There I was feeling all smugly PA and then I started reading about your glamorous MP friend and realised that none of my friends were MPs, in fact I know nobody interesting or remotely famous at all and all the NA feelings started creeping back and I spent the rest of the day fretting about it. So I’m going to have to redouble my efforts at world domination. Nissan Micra drivers look out. Watch this space …
I find I tend to have what ambition I possess by default, by which I mean that “I’m not staying here another moment” or “I cannot stand working with this tosser another second” kicks in and I’m compelled to do something.
Although I’m not sure that my recent brush with ambition is likely to come to much. I’d duly electronically sumbitted my form to the JAC only to be rung back almost immediatley ” did you mean to put your date of birth as 06/07/2006″ Mrs L? “Er no, that would be 06/07/62” – doesn’t exactly bode well for the rest of the form now does it?
Lips – Did they at least wish you happy birthday?
Teach – I think moving to Hawaii may be my new ambition.
Grunts – Or for the PA among us: look out Porsche Cayenne drivers
It is rare that one can come across a post that speaks of both ambition and scarfing at the same time. I give you mad props for doing so.
oh my lord, how did it take me so long to end up at this blog? i shudder when i think of how long it is going to take to properly stalk through your archives!
i think i am slightly worse than a pa as i tend to do only that which falls into my lap.
Kristin – you are welcome. Your strategy seems a good one provided your lap is ample and you don;t let too many toddlers sit on it.
Oh – I’m definitely NA and just look where it’s got me. But I’m happy enough (talk to me in a month when I haven’t found a means of paying for my vino, though … ahem).
I really like the ‘put the safety back on’ friendliness …
Oh – I’m definitely NA and just look where it’s got me. But I’m happy enough (talk to me in a month when I haven’t found a means of paying for my vino, though … ahem).
I really like the ‘put the safety back on friendliness’ …
Oops – sorry – working on steam engine PC at home. Must get broadband. I’ll add it to the list. Ahem.
I have now categorized all my friends as either NAs or PAs. I was a PA until I had kids and then slowly became a NA. I try not to stay in touch with all those people that I hear are “living in NYC next to Jackie O’s old spot” or are dusting off their PhDs or winning Photographer of the Year awards. Damn overachievers. Will pushing out 4 kids, keeping them all alive and gaining 25 pounds ever compare to that crap?
Well P and I would dearly love to have even one kid so I if the jealousy of others is a guide to achievement you are doing very well indeed. Often whether something seems like an achievement or not is a question of perspective.
Thanks Moobs! there are some really cute kids in Brasil. Thats where my parents found me!
(I’m NA on some days, and PA on others. I wish I could spot the pattern, because then I could make my NA-days my days off. But I can’t).
You convey the awkwardness of leaving no comforting cliche unplumbed very well. In fact, generally bloody brilliant, this one, Mr Moobs.