When I feel too much ambition, my ego has gotten too inflated

I was an ambitious teen-ager. I later became an ambitious adult.

I wanted power and material success, but more than anything else, I wanted approval. I wanted praise. I needed people to be impressed with what I did and with what I achieved.

By the time I was about 15 or 16 years old, I wanted to be president of the United States. That wasn’t just an idle daydream. I had a written plan for each step of the way. John F. Kennedy had become president at the age of 43. My goal was to beat that — to become president even younger.

In my 20s, I wanted to build a media empire. No matter where I worked in the newspaper business, my mind was looking ahead to the day when I would own a massive media conglomerate — newspapers, television, movies and more.

The truth is that I didn’t want any of these things. Although I enjoyed publishing newspapers, I didn’t want to run a big business. And I didn’t want to do the deals and fundraising that would get me somewhere powerful as a politician.

I just wanted praise. I wanted applause. My ego was begging for approval.

For most of my life, there’s been a battle between my ego and my heart, but I wasn’t self-aware enough at the time to understand what was going on.

My ego made grandiose plans. I saw myself as powerful and wealthy, but I mostly saw what I thought other people would see. My narcissistic father would see me as a success. The mother who had abandoned my family when I was very young would see how great her only son had become.

Other men would envy what I achieved. Women would want me and wish their husbands were more like me. People would look at me and think I was a great man.

I wouldn’t have admitted any of that. I’m not sure how conscious I was of any of this. I just knew that when I did the things that I truly loved, none of it involved power or money or success. And when I did do something that brought me success or money, none of those things were ever enough to make me feel much of anything.

On some level, I was terrified of not being powerful and successful. I was terrified of not making a mark on the world that would cause people to remember me in the years after I was gone. I was hungry for something that I couldn’t even name.

There are times when I still feel traces of those old bits of ambition, but when I do, I understand today that it’s just my ego. It’s just traces of old insecurity. It’s nothing that matters.

I would be miserable as a politician. Since I spent 20 years as a political consultant, I know what that life is like. It’s soulless. It’s amoral and it’s ethically empty. It’s a cess pool of narcissism and evil.

I would also be miserable running a big business. I like making products. I like making customers happy. I like creating things that are meaningful and which delight people. But I’m bored — at best — with the things necessary to build a big business. And I end up wanting to make decisions that favor making beautiful things over making good profits.

There was a time when I would have felt ashamed to say this, but all I really want to do is read widely, talk about ideas and then write about the things that matter to me. I’m interested in figuring out what actually matters — how life should be lived and what genuinely makes a difference to individuals and to communities — and I’m interested in spreading those ideas.

In a perfect world, money and success and material things would be nice, but those things aren’t that important. I’m not willing to do the things necessary to make them happen, because the truth is that the market doesn’t reward the kinds of questions I’m drawn to.

But I think what I have to say is more important than all the money and power and fame the world could ever offer.

All I want is a modest home with a loving family. I’d like a smart and insightful wife who is interested in the same ideas that matter to me — intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically. I’d like to have her to talk with and to read with — someone who wants to be part of this unpopular mission to pursue truth and meaning. (But if she doesn’t happen to come along, living alone with a handful of animals is better than trying to share life with someone whose expectations and desires are very different from my own.)

It would be nice for people to be impressed with me. It would be super to have a fancy house and all the material things I could imagine. But what I’ve learned is that my heart is far happier pursuing the things that truly matter to me. And none of the things that matter to me are likely to bring me ego satisfaction.

There’s a tiny part of me that still looks fondly on those immature dreams of fame and success. But I realize now that they’re empty and meaningless to my heart.

My fragile ego wants things that aren’t good for me. It wants things that can never matter.

I know what matters to me now, so I keep my ego in check. My heart is satisfied and joyful with keeping both feet on the ground.