The Restfulness / The Restlessness Of Ambition Poem by Azeez Ogundiran

What does it take to be ambitious?
To carry a fire you did not ask for,
a man-made desire that will not die—
the whisper that says,
you are meant to be more,
you must be more.

To conquer yourself.
To disrupt yourself.
To stretch toward the best version of who you are.

Every morning, it wakes me.
That nagging voice:
I should be better than this,
I should rise beyond this,
I should keep going.

And on the streets,
I see others winning,
climbing,
grasping what I long for.
And I ask,
why not me?
Why am I still here?

But then—
I remember.
Every path is different.
Every fire burns its own way.

So I must hold on.
I must feed this hunger,
keep ambition alive,
keep the flame from dying.

For an unexamined life is not worth living.
A man without ambition
is a shrinking world,
a small life.

I do not want a small life.
I want the wide horizon.
I want the dream,
even if it carries me
to the edge of the world,
even if it costs me everything.

This is my ambition.
My restlessness.
And strangely—
my rest.