If you look up the word “aspiration”, you get two dominant definitions. Most common is something akin to ambition, or achieving a goal that is strongly desired. The second less common definition is often associated with medicine: to breathe in.
I find it instructive that both words, ambition and aspiration, are thought as synonyms, and yet one is quite different from the other. If I was speak to the difference, ambition is about something we can achieve or earn. It is a goal. Whereas aspiration is something more ethereal, more like a gift or something that comes to us by a way of being.
Since both ideas concern what we receive, critical to our life is how we receive: by way of consumption or communion? As consumers, we are in control of what we want; or perhaps more specifically, what our ego wants. But to aspire, almost by definition, is a way of being – a way of relating – a communion. This way of communion is non-egotistical as it is living with a sense that everything is gift. Thus life is living in a constant state of surprise – not in a shocking sort of way, but more as a revealing.
Typically, when we consider either ambition or aspiration, we are referring to something distant. Several steps and time will be involved, but here again is a difference that is instructive. Ambition concerns something in the distance that we want right now, and it not so dependent on the environment around us. Aspiration, “to breathe in”, requires us to accept the environment around us, making that environment critical to how we live. This is not a new concept: “you are what you eat”, “nature vs. nature”, “choose your friends. . .” and other ideas all recognize the importance of our surroundings.
So why is it that we consume so recklessly? In this information age, we click and we click for hours, thinking that there is no harm in the exploration. We do so to alleviate our boredom and distract us from our present reality – from our presence. To aspire is to learn how to be present, accept it for what it is, and make it new. Thus it seems ambition and aspiration are not so similar after all; and the difference is very instructive to how we achieve, or should I say, receive.