On Ambition

Today my Father discouraged me from furthering my education in a writing direction.  I am here at the keyboard thinking about that and trying to put it into context.  Throughout grade school and high school, creative writing was an activity that I enjoyed a great deal.  Even though it was often difficult, it was an activity in which I found satisfaction in completion.  Perhaps more importantly, writing is one of the few productive activities I've done outside of school for my own gratification.

To be fair to my Father, my writings have really never been published.  They exist almost in their entirety on the web, in select forums he would never explore.  Still, to be told flat out what I shouldn't do by someone who lacked all information incensed me.  I should not pursue a written-language-use career?  By what standard was his judgement made?  On top of that, there is the absence of any sort of constructive suggestion of an alternative.  I received no guidance that I recall when leaving high school, and no positive guidance now.  I have chosen to begin a haggard, stumbling march, full of ignorance, to the mysterious far-off country of ambition and self-respect.  Perhaps I am too closed in my expression.  Perhaps I do not clearly show how hard this is for me and how significant I feel these steps are; but to be pushed to abandon my small ambition by a person unaware of my talents, interests and fears burns me.

Writing, at least as an application of the composition and delivery of ideas, may well be the only thing I'm 'good at'.  It is certainly one of the very few things I am actually confident about.  Perhaps that, then, explains my anger as I type this.  To be told I cannot write is to be told I cannot do anything; it is to be denied worth as a human being.  My self-worth is already fragile. My confidence in my decision is already weak.   Hearing those words filled me with fear.

I do not believe, I cannot believe, my Father is intentionally cruel.  I suspect he, like myself, is simply poor at understanding the emotions of others.  The masks I wear to hide my own vulnerability can only be aggravating the problem.  He does not know that he is hurting me, and I do not know how to tell him.

So this is perhaps the first wall to be climbed on the road to my own very modest ambition.  To gather the courage to say 'I know myself better than you know me', and to walk towards the perils and pitfalls I've chosen myself.  I must become a man who makes decisions.