The prize beyond the Mountain
What for me fundamentally differentiate man from animals are two things, first, his self-consciousness, and two, the pursuit of ambition.
Every man has ambition. Trust me; there is no such thing as lack of ambition, rather it has got to do with the measure of ambition. It is not the size of the dog in the fight; a common saying goes, but the size of the fight in the dog!
It is in the pursuits of ambition that many a man has failed. A thing about ambition is that it takes you through so much; you must have the staying power to finally achieve it.
Every pursuit of it, of course is like a road. What are you pursuing right now in life? What goal are your spending nights on? What road are you walking?
Which brings me to the question: Is there a road that ever comes to an end?
Whatever your thoughts, mine are that, at the point when you think a particular road has come to an end, another begins. It just depends on what means you are using. As in the picture below. If you are footing, you arrive at the point where the footpath stops, but notice the lake.
Have you been pursuing some ambition, some goal? Have you arrived that the point when you think you can’t go on? Then know this, in your mind, you are looking at the end to the footpath, and ignoring the beginning of another path that no less leads to your goal. Have you considered the lake path?
“I have done all I can!” you tell yourself, justifying the decision to give up on the goal that has pushed you forth until now, on the ambition that has driven you.
Unknown to you is that all it takes for you to continue is to change the means by which you are to continue forward.
The successful people will not sit down and say ‘it is over’. You know what they will do? They look for a canoe. If there is none, they will build one. And next they will be sailing on water going forth toward their ambition.
Is that now a guarantee that they will reach their appointed destination? It could be, or it could not be. Should it happen that the lake path brings you to before a mountain, rather than sit down and curse, look back to how far you have come, to everything path you have had to walk, and out of it, draw the energy to climb the mountain.
Beyond that mountain, is your prize.