AMBITION: The Name Game of Life

I was thinking the other day about my life, what I plan to do with it and what I have already done. What is my goal in life, what do I strive towards? I soon realised that really, I had no idea. It is not like I do not have a clue of what I want to do next. There were plenty of interesting assemblies in school that piqued my interest, but I had no ‘end goal’, no target that I can definitely say I have hit by the time I die. So, I decided to search for a good goal and I created a simple criterion by which my goal would be decided.

Quite simply, by the end of my life, I wanted to have had as large an impact as possible on the world and its people. That is simple enough, but it raises a larger, somewhat more insightful question. How does one measure their impact? What could you use to tell how much of an impact a person has had on the world? With this in mind, I sat and thought and I believe I have come up with an answer that suits me.

There is one thing that every person has and it is the only thing we know about some of the oldest recorded people, from the Babylonian kings to Biblical figures. A name is the first thing we are given and is the last thing that we are identified by. It seems quite logical really that the more a person has done in the world, the longer their name would be remembered for, even after all their physical achievements have faded into dust. With that in mind, I found my goal. That I, at the end of my life, will have a name that holds so much reputation and power that it echoes through the ages. It is funny though, I realised that this way of thinking makes life seem like a little bit of a game, whereby every person has to try and last the longest through time. Maybe it is just me, but this makes life just that little bit more enjoyable and certainly makes me more enthusiastic about living through it.