Mia Lasic-Ellis

Every day at Bowdoin, I am impressed by the lofty ambitions of my peers—dreams to cure antibiotic resistance, run All-American times and scale both literal and metaphorical mountains. Extraordinary ambition is the norm; a walk through the library is enough to absorb inspiration by osmosis. It is characterized by insatiable appetites and relentless drives to push the boundaries of what is possible. Life here can feel like a treadmill that never stops. Often powered by color-coded Google Calendars not designed for the faint of heart, it’s remarkably sustained with great poise.

A question posed in my modern political philosophy class asked, “Is the person with limited desires happier than the person with a large and continually fed appetite?” Intentionally provocative and broad, it got me thinking. Does this constant pursuit actually make us happier? Or does it rest on a false premise? Put glibly, is the very logic of our several-hundred-thousand-dollar education fundamentally misconstrued? Ultimately, I believe the pursuit of large goals and a “continually fed appetite” is both worthwhile and intricately associated with happiness. There is a distinctive fulfillment that comes from reaching for the stars, dreaming ambitiously and testing the limits of human potential. Yet this path does not come without risk. Unchecked, the same drive that fuels excellence can undermine the very fulfillment it promises. The pursuit itself is not the problem; losing sight of why we pursue it is.

The flaw in the “limited desires” approach is that it confines aspiration to what one already knows. Often, it is based on experiences, relationships and headlines of the past. However, what if life’s greatest goods are so extraordinary, you do not even know to wish for them? What if friendship, love, learning or even one’s capacity to change the world for the better exceed your wildest imagination? These questions reveal the pitfalls of restraint. One cannot meaningfully calculate the cost of not pursuing these ends without first encountering how expansive they can be. French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s famous collection of essays emphasizes the role of human agency. The world is far from neatly ordered. No one can really know things for certain. As a result, the self is unfinished and always restless for improvement. In one of my favorite of his essays, “On Friendship,” he describes his “perfect” bond with his companion Étienne de La Boétie. Their friendship was unforeseeable and impossible to rationally plan for. Exceptionally special, “Because it was he; because it was I.” The supposed tradeoff between contentment and ambition is therefore a false equivocation. It discounts the upside entirely, because its magnitude is unknowable in advance.

Yet if reaching for the stars is so clearly beneficial, why do overachievers carry such a poor reputation? At best, obnoxious and insufferable; at worst, as cruel and morally corrupt. Cue, your least favorite politician (many to choose from!). As articulated by Niccolò Machiavelli, human beings are driven by the pursuit of power and wealth, aims that can readily justify trampling others along the way. Ambition is inseparable from manipulation, fear and domination. While Machiavelli offers unsettlingly relevant realist insights into human behavior, I resist the conclusion that this drive for power is our chief or inevitable end. Such a view discounts the real, if imperfect, capacity of institutions, norms and shared ethical commitments to channel ambition toward constructive ends. Call it naïveté but believing in the possibility of a better world is not foolish; it is necessary.

Here lies the first lesson for overachievers: Ambition is only as defensible as the values that direct it. When the target is poorly chosen, the pursuit curdles. Power and wealth, so often mistaken for ends in themselves, are at best instruments. Untethered from ethical commitments, they invite a common caricature: ambition as domination, success as zero-sum and achievement as moral erosion. Desiderius Erasmus, in his work “The Education of the Christian Prince,” enunciates this phenomena, warning the dangers of misplaced legitimacy and shortcuts to virtuous action. He highlights the importance of genuinely cultivating ethical qualities of character. When thoughtfully applied, ambition need not be Machiavellian. Money can fund institutions. Influence can be exercised to expand opportunity. The danger lies not in striving, but in aiming at the wrong end, or worse, never asking why. Ambition is not a vice, but it does hold that potential when misaligned.

Most relevant at Bowdoin is the association of ambition with steep personal psychological costs. The pursuit of greatness is frequently paired with chronic stress and crushing expectations. One tragedy of the overachiever lies in tethering fulfillment exclusively to the future. As Aristotle argues in the “Nicomachean Ethics,” happiness is unique in that it is an end in itself. Most actions ultimately collapse into a similar chain of reasoning: “Do this so that you may be happy.” However, what happens when these goalposts are perpetually in motion? Well, happiness then often becomes provisional and conditional. This failure to acknowledge the present is neatly captured by Andy Bernard’s lament in “The Office”: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” The line is not scholarly, but it is incisive. It exposes the quiet cost of future obsession: The inability to recognize meaning as it is being lived.

My time competing on Bowdoin’s track and field team offers a useful paradigm for this dilemma. I love athletics for its capacity to clarify life. Fewer variables and many lessons. In running, improvement is relentless. Constant pursuit of faster and faster. Crossing the finish line after scoring a personal best immediately expands the definition of what is “possible.” By this logic, satisfaction should be impossible. And yet, despite disappointing performances, injuries and frustrating seasons, ask almost any runner why they continue. The answer is almost never a particular time nor a specific race. From my own anecdotal observation, the fastest and most successful runners, the ones able to achieve sustained, long-term success, are especially drawn to the process of achieving greatness.

Consider the Greek myth of Sisyphus. After deceiving the gods, he is condemned by Zeus to Tartarus, forced to roll a massive boulder uphill for eternity, only for it to tumble back just short of the summit. The task is endless and futile, giving us the term “Sisyphean task.” On its face, it is a bleak and depressing metaphor for striving. However, modern philosopher Albert Camus famously reframes the myth. In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus recasts Sisyphus as the “absurd hero,” insisting that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” By accepting the inevitability of the rolling stone, Sisyphus reclaims agency. Meaning is located in the climb itself and no longer deferred to the summit (for more inspo, listen to Hannah Montana’s “The Climb”). Cheesy as it sounds, the lesson is simple: love the rock. After all, there is no upper limit on how meaningful the road itself can be.

Andrea Becker is a member of the Class of 2026.