Boat Without The Sails

A man without any ambition is a boat without the sails. It can drift in any direction and at the end of the day may find life a fruitless and frustrated nothingness.
There needs to be some point, some direction in life which may lead one on and on. R.L. Stevenson an English essayist has said ‘An aspiration is a joy for ever.
To travel hopefully is better than to arrive’. If one has arrived, the joy of the journey is over. You keep enjoying a journey with the expectancy of reaching.
Once you have reached, that buoyancy filling you during the journey is over. This does not, so much mean, that one should not achieve what one wants to but any achievement should not be taken ‘as the land’s end.
What you achieve today should inspire you to try to achieve still more and still further. That would keep life with a ‘living and kicking’ sensation and shall vivify you, otherwise there would hardly remain any charm and zest in living. There should ever be a goal to be achieved; if Kanchenjunga has been reached, Mt. Everest still should keep beckoning you.
That is what Stevenson meant when he said ‘an aspiration is a joy for ever’. An impetus is the elixir of life and that should never be lost. Achievements have no end, one leads to the next and the next to still next. The joy of winning a race is only when you have a competitor close at heels.
A lone runner may grow sluggish in his pace as he will take it for granted that he has won the race. Once having put in his best efforts to win at the national event, you begin looking forward to the World Olympics and even after winning at that you begin aspiring to retain the position even at the next.
Why should one try to gain and regain the championship at the Wimbledon tournament year after year and there have been players who have remained at the top for eight successive years. Why give up if you have the stamina but once you give up, the stamina gives you up.
The trophies are brought and kept aloft for the contesting final...