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  3. 　　Below are two short excerpts on the relationship between ambition and happines

　　Below are two short excerpts on the relationship between ambition and happines

游客2024-11-04  54
问题 　　Below are two short excerpts on the relationship between ambition and happiness. Read them carefully, and write an essay of no less than 300 words, in which you should:
　　(1) sum up the main ideas in both sides, and then
　　(2) explain your view on the relationship between ambition and happiness.
选项
答案 Excerpt 1
                                              Ambition and Happiness
　　Viewed in one way, ambition is a good thing, and its absence in people, especially in the young, we consider to be a defect. Without ambition, there can be no realization of one’s potential. Happiness is connected with the latter. We are happy when we are active in pursuit of choice-worthy goals that we in some measure attain. On the other hand, there is no happiness without contentment, which requires the curtailing of ambition. There is thus a tension between two components of happiness. It is a tension between happiness as self-actualization and happiness as contentment.
　　To actualize oneself one must strive. One strives for what one doesn’t have. Striving is predicated upon feeling lack. But one who lacks what he desires is not content, not at peace, and so is unhappy in one sense of the term. One who longs for what is permanently out of reach will be permanently unhappy, always striving, never arriving. Not only will he not get what he wants, he will fail to appreciate what he has.
　　To be happy one must strive for, and in some measure attain, choice-worthy ends. That requires ambition. But the attaining is not enough; one must rest in and enjoy what one has attained. That requires the curtailing of ambition.
Excerpt 2
                                                Are Ambitious People Happier?
                                                                   By Drake Baer
　　Though it’s central to American life, the ambition-happiness tension receives surprisingly little academic attention, However, a new research drawing from a 90-year longitudinal study of gifted children sheds new light.
　　From what the researchers found, ambition had clear causes and effects on lives as they grew into maturity. The most ambitious had common traits: They had parents with occupational prestige, and their personalities were organized, disciplined, and goal-seeking. As you’d expect, the more ambitious were better educated, made more money, and landed more prestigious jobs.
　　But ambition did not predict for well-being in the same way: It was only weakly connected with well-being and in fact negatively associated with longevity, meaning that ambitious people died earlier.
　　One of the researchers, John D. Kammeyer-Mueller, tells us that ambition didn’t impact how satisfied people felt with their lives—they felt they had accomplished more with them—but that project-based happiness got in the way of personal relationships. As the researchers write, this "darker side" needs to be further explored:
　　"...It may be that ambitious individuals have both virtuous characteristics for the self (like goal striving and higher levels of work activity) and negative characteristics for others around them (like a desire to "win at all costs," or a willingness to undermine others to achieve their own ends).
But it’s probably both. People are complex: In the course of a life—or a morning commute—you could be both pro-social and anti-social, kind and cruel. And while Machiavelli resonates with us, so does a giver like Adam Grant.
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