Ambition

[Adam Blatner]

 Ambition-- connects to exuberance, passion, calling.
        Also interestingly to sociometry, in some ways.
              More tele for me with others with passion.
                   But not necessarily for certain sub-tasks, certain socio-telic activities.
      How much ambition is required to go on the road, travel and teach, with all the trials that involves?
             I may be a bit lacking. 
        How much to spend money and priority of how one spends one's remaining savings to attend national and international conferences, or to present psychodrama?
             I might be criticized for husbanding my resources.
         In other ways, some might find me quite ambitious, in writing and publishing, which I've been doing for many years and is still a priority.
           Yet I'm drifting somewhat away from focus on psychodrama itself and therapy to more general challenges of consciousness raising in culture, applications beyond clinical context, and mixing it with or applications from other fields of drama and even philosophy...

           And toying with a lateral move to bringing my art into a form of more widely accessible enjoyment (hint, look at some of the cartoon-mandalas on my website)... 

           Then Peter said, how much time do I have? That's sure true for me as I turn 69 in a couple weeks.
  Another element in all this is how focused should one be? I have failed to live up to my potential because I value spending time with a soul-mate, my wife. I say-- whoa, you get one of these only every 40-50 reincarnations--if you're very very good--- so treasure it!  So I diversify my ambition to enjoy a role-distribution among a variety of activities, caring for and about family, community, participation in dancing, singing, fitness, participation in lifelong learning, teaching and reading and discussing issues locally, etc. 

        So my response is not to value an abstraction, but rather to discuss with Allee every time a friend sickens or dies, "Okay, that's another opportunity to remind ourselves: Are we doing what we want? What are our priorities?"

Right now, I'm committed to bringing forth this anthology about improvisational and interactive drama approaches; then moving up from the back burners, a number of papers on consciousness transformation, an expansion of my paper in Gershoni's book on applying role playing in everyday life, and other things I've mentioned.

      Do those thoughts evoke anything in you, Peter?  Or others?
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Peter Howie 
  To: list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 6:46 PM
  Subject: Ambition


  Hi all,

  I've been thinking recently about what keeps me going at times, what keeps others going and thing of this nature. Watching Frank Lowy in a documentary, a multi-billionaire Aussie with 180 mega-shopping complexes around the world, who funded the turn-around of Australian soccer/football and helped get us to international status, when asked what kept him going he said he was still full of ambition.

  I'm imagining that J L Moreno was also full of ambition, ambition to do many things, one of which was to promote and teach his remarkable method and to try and set up systems to support its ongoing practice, teaching, methodological review and improvement and philosophical development. 

  I'm thinking on this and wondering about my own level of ambition. Psychodramatists with ambition that I know of would be Kate with the Spiral model work, Marcia Karp, Max Clayton - and there would be heaps of others. I am not thinking about abilities or skills as a trainer, educator or practitioner. More about their ambition to relentlessly push forward in creating a world that they would like to live in, surrounded by colleagues who support and challenge them and keeping going despite their own human flaws and foibles.

  Anyway - this rises for me as I contemplate doing things a bit differently around here with how I spend my time promoting psychodrama and Morenian processes. How much do I have. Ho much do those around me support or parallel me. Things like this.

  So how does this idea of ambition sit with some of you?

  Cheers for now

  Peter Howie
  Brisbane, Australia





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