House of Ambition

“Perhaps in Slytherin,

You’ll meet your real friends,

Those cunning folks use any means,

To achieve their ends.”

When I Was a Slytherin

I’m one of many who grew up on the famous Harry Potter book series. Supposedly, within the fictional universe, the house that you’re assigned to reflects something unchanging in you. No matter how much character development one undergoes, no matter how much time passes, you will still represent the values of your house. That’s why your house chooses you. That’s why you can’t will the house you want. It says your wants and superstitions are surface-level, fluid. The sorting hat sees through you to something permanent.

And yet, it is character development we face. Change occurs. The neat, fitted boxes from adolescence don’t fit so well when you stop looking for places to fit. Those categories are so appealing as ways of characterizing or identifying yourself, but eventually, you realize there aren’t two types of people. We don’t all fit into four houses, or five factions, or even 16 personalities.

I was a Ravenclaw before I was ever a Slytherin. Eventually, though, I didn’t want to be. It didn’t suit how I saw myself or how I saw other people, and I wasn’t bound by the magical laws that say you can’t change your mind.

Slytherin is the house of villains, the house of the misunderstood. The house of politics, of cunning and ambition. The house of legacy, lineage, of powerful people immortalized in statues. The house of the Dark Arts. It was for people who did not fit the mold to be heroes, who were not lawful good. I was an angsty teenager, and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to see myself that way.

When I was a Slytherin, I reasoned that I didn’t need to be ambitious in the classical sense. I wanted stability, comfort, and simplicity. I believed those things would make me happy, and I decided that was as worthy an ambition as any other. I wanted a coffee shop, a farmers’ market, and a garden. I can admit now—it doesn’t suit the aesthetic very well of dark academic and political leadership.

Looking back, I wonder if that meant ambition is knowing what you want. I never made steps to pursue my sleepy ambitions, being a teenager and all, but I felt secure that those were my ambitions, and that made me ambitious. Is ambition an act of self-awareness? Is wanting, itself—an act I have long grappled with—ambition?

When I Was The Sun

For an intense phase of my life, long after Harry Potter left the sphere of my identity, I truly was ambitious. During my first years of community college, I was deeply growth-oriented. I wanted vulnerability, and I chased it. I wanted intimacy, and I made it. I was a warm, bright, and kind person, and I made drastic changes in my life to chase what I wanted.

We all feel, in moments, that we are unloved. I think we also all start out believing that we can’t ask to be loved. If you ask someone to tell you they love you, it defeats the purpose, right? You had to ask. The burden was on you. They’re only saying it because you pressured them to. That can’t be emotionally honest, right?

When I was the sun, I committed myself to unlearning that. I committed myself to honesty, accountability, and trust. All I had to do was assume the best of people.

When I felt insecure, all I had to do was trust that my friends would answer me honestly. That’s a decision you make. No trust is earned nonsense. No rationalizing myself out of it. I wanted to trust people, and I decided to.

I wanted to open myself up and be vulnerable. I was scared of being hurt, but so what? Vulnerability is fear. It is hurt. I wanted it, and I made it. I dug my fingers in anywhere it hurt and put those parts of me on a pedestal for the people I wanted to show.

I miss when I was the sun. He was the most interesting and magical person I’ve ever been. For him, ambition wasn’t wanting. It wasn’t knowing what I wanted. It was chasing. It was taking. It was actionable, and he was able.

When I Am Depressed

I am a very different person now than I have been. I lack ambition almost entirely. I’m also the most successful I’ve ever been.

I passed two for-credit internships and completed all of my degree requirements. In theory, I’ve already graduated, although there is some complication in my classes being online. I’m waiting for confirmation this month. I’m basically a graduate, though.

I held a paid job for most of a year, physical labor nonetheless. I can drive all the way to Costco, albeit not without crying. I am the most accomplished I’ve ever been—all of those accomplishments came after the sun had set, after I stopped being the ambitious person I remember, who chased what he wanted.

I am committed now to a journal routine that involves 420 daily reflective prompts, but every new entry seems to say the same thing: I lack intention. I don’t do anything with purpose. I should.

It is virtually the opposite of ambition. I don’t chase what I want like the sun. I don’t know what I want, like a Slytherin. I hardly know if I want. It is an exercise that requires intense focus to discern that I do or do not want something in each given moment. It’s much easier to flow through in indifference than to center myself and focus.

I know that this depression is just another phase in my life. I still love myself through it. I still do my best to take care of myself. I know that things will change again, unpredictably, cyclically, or both. I do keep looking for ways out, thinking that maybe the rediscovery of sunrises, celery, or vitamin C is the thing that will fix me. Usually they don’t, and that’s okay. I’m grateful I have them to help in small ways.

Reading Litzy Rivas’s blog last week on resilience and commitment, Bouncing Back: How to Maintain Healthy Habits, reminded me of another way I can try and work my way out of this fog, to hopefully make it back to someone who is more intentional, more ambitious. I want to take accountability for myself, be someone who makes choices rather than someone who floats between other people’s decisions.

Litzy wrote about romanticizing your responsibilities to help avoid burnout and stay committed to them. I’m not a student anymore who needs to romanticize studying, but I know when I was the sun, I was deeply romantic. I cared so much about everything. I cared about the sky, food, my friends, my body, my relationships, my moral philosophy, my assignments, exploring, novelty, art, growth, and change. I was a poet and an artist and a lover and a scientist.

I may not ever be the sun again. Maybe I will be, but only in moments. Maybe, despite that, I can be someone new who is romantic.

Maybe someone who is romantic can be intentional again.

Maybe someone who is intentional can be ambitious again.

What if looking for those magic solutions is, itself, ambitious? Maybe ambition is what drives me to say this is the cure, this is what I need, and then I’ll be good again, each time I feel warmth from clean hair or the smell of prepackaged cookies.

What if accepting and permitting myself to be an aimless puddle is not mutually exclusive from getting better? What if acceptance and ambition are comorbid ideas?

Maybe it’ll be a while, and I have a good few years of being a puddle in me before I change again. Maybe romanticizing my depressed mornings, being the gentle, loving caretaker, feeding my begrudgingly heavy body breakfast at noon, still won’t clear the fog.

I don’t consider myself at all an ambitious person. I’m starting to believe, though, it’s in me. I’ve always struggled with allowing my identity to reflect likable traits. I have a very difficult time considering myself valuable, skilled, or kind.

It’s much easier to defend that I am what people dislike about me, but that they should love those traits as much as I do. Who has time to believe you’re ambitious if you’re busy convincing people that it’s still a lovable trait to be callous? Or even that you are callous, when they believe that because they like you, you must not have any of the traits they say they dislike?

It has been an interesting backward journey to so easily accept the distasteful parts of myself and other people, but struggle to accept the virtues and merits I hold. I am developing some confidence now that I am too my virtues: I am kind, gentle, attentive, flexible, resilient, and just maybe, ambitious.

I can love myself for more than the ways I’ve been rejected. I will always hold my less-liked traits dear, because they are important to me, but maybe I can accept that they’re not all I am, either.

Pretty ambitious for a puddle, huh?

About the Author

I’m an LYF administrator and wellness coordinator who works closely with the writing teams. I have a background in journalism, technical writing, poetry and creative prose.

Introspection and careful behavioral analysis have been my most refined skill. I take a deep care in observing and understanding the people around me. It’s an interest that is only fair or possible to do if you're 100% accepting of what you're going to find in people. To discover the things they can't admit because they dislike it in themselves is cruel and unkind unless you take on a particular perspective that at worst their worst traits are neutral.

I define myself by that perspective of radical acceptance, and I hope that you as readers can feel warmth in my work.