I gave up ambition for my birthday two years ago.

When I mentioned this to people, I got a lot of responses that sounded something like this: “What do you mean? You can’t give up ambition! You’re an ambitious person! You just opened a new business! What does that even mean?! Don’t you want it to succeed?!”

I could hear the well-meaning nervousness in the tone of their voices.

I had heard that nervousness before — though, seemingly less well-meaning.

It was a mid-January afternoon in 2014, as I was teetering around to partners’ corner offices in 4-inch high heels to let them know that: “thankyouverymuchforalltheopportunitiesyou’vegivenme but now… Now, I am leaving this law firm to go teach yoga and meditation.”

I could pretty much place the reactions I received, as I gave my 2-weeks notice speech, into two buckets.

Bucket 1: Their gaze would go a little soft, and they’d look somewhere out into the middle distance, their own eyes young again with possibility. And I could see that they were on that lavender farm in Provence making soaps or writing their spy novels in a cozy attic office. Whatever their other dreamy alternative life may have been, they let themselves glimpse it for just that moment.

Bucket 2: Gaze sharpens. Shoulders tense. Jaw clenches. They stand a little straighter, with hands gripped into fists, and they’d eek out clipped phrases like, “Yep. I get it. This work is not for everyone. Some people just can’t hack it here.”

Bucket 1 made me feel connected to a shared sense of expansiveness.

Bucket 2 made me realize that what those folks said had very little to do with me.

Bucket 2 was AMBITION talking.

Or, maybe it’s not “ambition.”

I still don’t have the correct phrasing to hold it a simple way — or in a single word — when I say ambition.

Whatever I gave up for my 38th birthday. Whatever I heard 10 years ago out of those mostly male, mid-level, law firm partners’ mouths (they, funny, enough were probably around 38 back then too).

That’s what I mean when I say ambition.

I know it when I see it and this is what it feels like: always chasing what’s next.

It’s got a staccato rhythm to it. Fast paced:

Check! What’s next?
Check! What’s next?
Check! What’s next?

I’ve always described it as “the next right thing” syndrome. Where you do the things that get you the head nods of external approval. So you keep doing that next right thing. You get another head nod. You do the next right thing. You get another head nod. Again and again and again. Just like that.

It’s what my burnt-out clients describe as “task mastering” through their lives on autopilot.

It’s the opposite of content. Of present. Of relaxed. Of Mary Oliver’s “soft animal body.”

It’s armored up. It’s living life from those tensing veins in our necks and furrowed brows.

It’s what keeps our heads down and noses to the grindstone. Never letting ourselves come up for fresh air or sunlight, because there’s still so much left to accomplish.

It’s crushing it, till we ourselves are crushed too.

And no matter what — ambition, or whatever is the right word — keeps me feeling that it will never be enough. Because there will always be more to achieve.

And when I’m strung out on ambition, to this day, I miss the moment in front of me completely. I miss my actual life, waiting for … what’s next?

I was raised on a particular breed of second-wave feminism.

Maybe you were too?  

We were given very clear instructions that made a lot of sense for the particular hard-won moment that they came from.

You can have the career of your dreams. And break the glass ceiling. And be the first. And have your family. And have the help that you need. And the big house and the right car and the right clothes and the right accolades. And you will be happy. And you will have arrived. You can have it all. And damnit, you will look good while you do it.

I don’t know that any of us have found this to be true?

Have you?

I remember the spring after I left Big Law, I was headed to the high mountains of New Mexico to go on a retreat with my dear teacher Shawn. I was traveling from DC with another woman.

She was a few years old than I was, pregnant with her second kid. Married to a kind man. She also seemed to be content enough in her work, some very DC, public health field that allowed her to help people in her day job and still teach a yoga class every now and then. Everything that was missing from my “ALL” and things that I wanted so badly.

I had just jumped ship from my very cushy corporate gig and my grip was beginning to loosen on the idea that I could have it all.

And through simple, clear, honest conversation, as we drove from Albuquerque to Taos in our rental car, she gave me a GIFT.

I can’t even remember what she said exactly but her everyday stories about her everyday life were like light beams of illumination and freedom.

“Oh my gosh,” I realized: “you never really arrive.”

“You can check all the boxes. You can collect all the degrees, the accolades, the shoes, the right-sized house in the right suburb with the right amount of cars that can fit in the garage, the next zero in your bank account, all of it, you have it “all,” — and yet you never really arrive.

We can hustle our whole lives. We can rush to the false hope of a finish line. We can chase an answer, a number, an ROI all day long, and yet. I don’t think we ever really “arrive.”

There might be a moment of relief at the end of a deadline. But relief is not the same as joy. Or presence. Or fulfillment. Hmm.”

So I guess that’s what I meant when I said I gave up ambition last year. I wanted to be able to call it. To settle into the moment. To pause and look around and say, “Ok, this is good enough. That’ll do. I’ll take it.”

But it’s been sticky, this work of unraveling ambition. It’s the underlying itch I still feel. It’s the thing that makes us look at our perfectly good cup of coffee and say “Damn, I wish it were a little bit hotter and my mug a little fuller, then it’d be perfect.”

There’s a poem by Barbara Ras, and it is SO good. It’s called “You Can’t Have It All.”

It’s stunning and it’s absolutely quotidian. In it, after the title to the poem, “You Can’t Have It All,” are the opening lines, “But you can have …” and so begins a seemingly stream of consciousness rattling off a list of very simple, yet striking, everyday things, presumably from her life.

What she had to eat on that day. What she saw. What she heard. What was there in that moment, even if she didn’t have it “all.”

On any given day, it’s really easy to let ambition try and tell my story. And when she does, she focuses on all the shit I’m not yet doing or probably never will do — like all the emails I’ve yet to answer, the systems I don’t have in place, the content calendar I don’t have in place, the million dollar business scheme I don’t have in place. And when ambition’s in charge, I feel bad about my efforts. 

In those moments, I write my own (shabby yet totally satisfying) rendition of Barbara’s poem. It’s an exercise I give to my clients. It’s one I’ll offer to you today, or any day.

Here’s mine, today.

You Can’t Have It All.

But you can have this wildly warm, late October day. And sitting on the back porch amongst the crackly, fallen leaves tapping out this essay and also thinking, “what’s for dinner?” The walk through the woods earlier and the way the grasses are bursting with their “unmattering back.” The thick-cut bacon on my sandwich. The morning yoga class I took instead of answering my emails. The crisp apple and the gifted loaf of sourdough bread. This community that surrounds us and their generosity. The dreams and the worries for “what’s next.” The energizer bunnies who are my kids and their 6am wakeup call. The good nights of sleep lately, which require getting in bed at 8pm after the kids are down and reassuring myself “one day, you’ll enjoy late night conversations and adult time around a fire over a lovely glass of wine but today is not that day.” This note to you. YOU. Reading these words and perhaps about to write your own.

May you be healthy, may you be happy, may you be safe, may you know love,
Cath

Meditation: The Loving-Kindness Meditation. Do your best. Let it be enough.

Reflection: Write your own poem! You can’t have it all but you can have…