Beware
Its food is someone else's attention, its drink is someone else' admiration; being always visible is its religion. The men and women who are its slaves have a cerebral connection with it and with each other, thus forming, even if unconsciously, a gigantic exemplar, one body and one mind with only one goal: turning its mouth into a horn, an enormous horn which makes sounds that it is fond of, music for its mortal dance, the destructive frequency of nothingness in the form of rumors, gossip, murmuring, empty conversations, useless comments, gossip, opinions. Conceived in the human mind at the very moment when humans stopped fighting and struggling for life's real necessities, it was born out of the desire of leaving a mark, and since then it has become the real and only human occupation, humanity's only, omnipresent job. It turns on in the human mind just seconds before the alarm clock goes off and most of the times it is never turned off even while we are sleeping.
It is ambition. Ambition never abandons mankind, it is what we yearn for most; it is even more powerful than love, because love can easily be turned into ambition, but ambition can never be turned into love. It directs and completely engages every human dimension: dreams, wishes, altruism, love, dedication, work, laws, religion, politics, economy, leisures, sport, culture. When enveloped in the desire of leaving a sign, it can easily crush and bend the holiest projects, the purest feelings, the highest dedication.
The most poisonous ambition is not even the one created by one's own mind, but the one acquired through family ties and educational organizations. Often the ambitions of a mother, a father, spiritual, scholastic or psychological mentors do not even permit us to create our own ambition mechanism and most people spend their lives working, struggling, suffering to realize someone else's ambitions. Ambition never ever creates anything good. Ambition confuses general good taste and sense of duty with talent, and one's own expectations with real abilities; and where it does not succeed with those abilities it tries again with hypocrisy. Ambition rewards only itself, degrading men and women's mental capacities until they cause them to be turned off permanently. Even when it seems to be asleep or dozing, the sound of a horn generated by someone else's success or failure, a piece of gossip, a rumor is enough to set it off more powerful then ever. Ambition cannot ever lead to knowing and loving God, or to living and following Gospel procedures.
Being struck by ambition is a temptation for every human being and can be overcome only by praying tirelessly in the secret of the one's room and heart. Believing in ambition, choosing it as the king to subject oneself to, practicing it as one's way of life, as the procedure to adhere to will fill our earthly journey with pride, arrogance and violence and make us lose our way to Heaven. Jesus told us to beware of ambition, mainly because it fills the hole of the love that is lacking for God, for oneself and for others, and it annihilates every light and reward in Heaven.