Assessing Benchmarks

Killing two birds with one stone is always nice (not literally). What defines or constitutes ambition? It often seems that ambition ends up being correlated with competitiveness. While ambition may be a good thing, and competitiveness a good thing from the market/system/macro or “zoomed out” perspective, it is not necessarily a good trait to harbor on a micro level. And it also may not be necessary to relate the term of “competition” to be the one that creates good outcomes. Competition merely drives us to be better, but is not a virtue itself.

Ambition, noun

1. strong desire for success, achievement, or distinction

2. something so desired; goal; aim

While the definition of ambition seems simple and harmless,  what if we could reevaluate how ambition is practiced?

An ambitious person may merely be seeking to compare, rather than to compete. The tendency to compare and gauge for a benchmark of what is the correct norm or, a benchmark level, or a  critical level, in order to track one’s own progress can be beneficial for an ambitious person, but the choice of which benchmark to use is often the most crucial one. As in any social research, the comparisons must be made among like terms. The person most certainly similar to yourself on a micro level is YOU. Yes, the time effect varies, that is, person A at age 10 does not know what person A would have done at age 10 because he has no experience being that age. So, with that respect person A cannot benefit from using person A at age 5 as a benchmark.

For this, and other small references, a person may look outward for guidance, but I believe that not knowing where you stand among others, and not placing yourself on any scale with others allows us to be more humble, to avoid jealousy, and to always work hard and harder (for like the hare, we do not know that we are “ahead” because we are not even on the same scale). As a society, we may be happier in being the best selves we can possibly be, without feeling despair at being “behind” and without feeling arrogant for being “ahead”, while still using an introspective form of ambition, making sure that our progress is correlated strongly with our own age, hoping that that will be enough for the world. After all, the wings are but the mechanism with which to fly a peaceful journey.