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  3. Below are two short excerpts on the relation between ambition and happiness.

Below are two short excerpts on the relation between ambition and happiness.

游客2024-11-08  22
问题    Below are two short excerpts on the relation between ambition and happiness.
   Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should:
   1. sum up the main ideas in both;
   2. explain your view on the relationship between ambition and happiness.
   Excerpt 1
                        Ambition and Happiness
(http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/11/ambition-and-happiness.html)
   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 felt 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?
   http://www.fastcompany.com/3008604/leadership-now/are-ambitious-people-happier
                                                                  By Drake Baer
   Though it’s central to American life, the ambition-happiness tension receives surprisingly little academic attention, though 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 ambitious individual (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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答案    Everybody, in his life, must have thought over the following questions. What is happiness? What is my ambition? The two excerpts address the relationship between the two. According to the first excerpt, there exists a tension between self-actualization and self-contentment. A really happy person should both hope for more and be happy for what he has. The second excerpt reports a study that supports this claim. The study reveals that ambition is only slightly connected with people’s happiness and even negatively connected with life span. This is because ambition can drive people to win success at any cost, and therefore damages their relationship with others, and finally affects their feeling of happiness.
   I can’t agree to the conclusions in the two excerpts more. In my view, happiness is a state of well-being and contentment which results from harmony either inside the individual or between the individuals. While harmony inside the individual means consistency between what one thinks, what one says and what one does, harmony between the individuals refers to the friendly relationship between one person and the people around him or her. Meanwhile, ambition is an ideal envisioned in one’s mind which lends a goal or meaning to his life. If a person’s ambition is not against his own will as well as the interests of other people, he will benefit from it. A young man who secretly desires to be a scientist but sets becoming a billionaire to be his ambition simply because his parents tell him so won’t gain happiness in the long run. Hitler’s grand ambition brought about catastrophe both to himself and the whole world because it is antisocial.
   To sum up, one, especially the young man, needs an ambition to render his life meaningful and happy. But in the choice and pursuit of his ambition, it is sensible for him to listen to his heart and take heed of the feelings of the people around him especially of those dear to him. Just as the first excerpt claims, there is a delicate tension between self-actualization and contentment. It takes wisdom to handle the tension properly.
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