As I sit and ponder

Ambition, like death, is a cold, cold thing. Yet like the air we breathe, we keep falling into its seductive embrace. Poor, wretched beings that we are, what else can we do?

I’ve always known that I would venture into politics, and although I sought different ways to express my then-budding desire to help in alleviating the plight of the common man (I wanted to study law – and even went as far as buying a book on criminal law), I had never really sat down to think through the lofty goal I had set for myself – or perhaps life had set for me.

Not until now.

Slowly, but surely, my aspiration to help the ordinary folks, had shrewdly – and with a perfected art of deception – morphed into a burning ambition. That is not, in itself, a bad thing. But when it starts to make demands on you that question the real reasons why you make every single move, the time has come to search yourself and come to terms that at this crossroad, you will either make it or lose yourself to this dream.

So you ask yourself – the one hundred and fiftieth time – if this dream is worth the effort. Is it worth the life you’ll be trading in for probabilities? Is it worth the constant misunderstandings and misrepresentation? Is it worth the deadening of a warm heart and the adaptation to the cold reality of a life full of greys? Is it worth trading in my humanity for my victory?

I don’t know. Not yet. Maybe never.

As I sit and ponder on these questions, my mind travels through the maze that is my life. And at each point, I notice with alarm and (probably) disbelief the pattern that has somehow become the portrait called me: a little pushing here; a masked grabbing there; a fluidity of thoughts and commitments; an ever-restless spirit, never satisfied, and always reaching out for more.

And it all makes sense. I was born for this. I will live for this. But I pray I will never have to trade this in.