Member-only story
ambition
I don’t have any desire to walk along a thin wire stretched between two buildings towering over 1,000 ft. in the air…but sometimes, I feel as if I already am.
Philippe Petit states that when you hold such deep passion and ambition for something, you must set out without hope — to chase what you desire without a specific result in mind. This eases the anxiety of getting it perfect — with time, words, results, with anything.
In the midst of such daring choice to chase your desires, you’re bound to face moments of imperfection and challenge. The walk to where we desire to be and what we desire to obtain is never easy.
On the high wire, there’s spontaneous birds, sudden gusts of strong winds, and worst of all, your own mind. It may rush you or perhaps linger on the mistake you made with your previous step, hindering you from continuing on with mental grace or even continuing on at all.
Though, when we do decide to continue on and weather the storm, we come to find ourselves near our desired end.
Petit warns: you must take your final step as if it was your first — still, without hope, but also with undeniable confidence and ambition. Just because there is only one more step, doesn’t mean its over; you must commit from beginning to end, or you will meet your plummet.
The first step onto the wire is the point of no return, and the only way to successfully achieve your desires is to fully commit from the first step, through the challenging and wrong, all the way until you find yourself completely grounded of the opposing side that you’d first began.