Ambition Tempered by Apathy

Let apathy encompass your life and you will be a nihilist, everything will be equally worthless as everything else and it will be impossible to love or pursue anything in life. On the other hand, let ambition encompass your life and you may find that there is so much that is worthwhile and so much that is lovely that it will likewise be impossible to pursue anything because your love is spread so thin. If no roads are worth walking or if many roads are worth walking, you remain standing still staring at the landscape.

So you let your ambition run wild; you wander around collecting things to care about, ensuring that you stave off nihilism with will and desire. Then you look at your mere twenty-four hour day coupled with an anemic seven day week and your growing collection of fetal projects that just lack the nourishment to make it to term. Then you've got to turn around and go in the other direction: pruning, burning, chiseling. You are going to have to drop some hopes and smother some ambitions so that the others have enough resources to survive.

Remember: You are mortal, therefore finite, therefore particular. You can't be everything; every moment you spend carries a cost.