such as “I just want to be happy” or “I want to live well” or “I
want to make the world a better place” or even “I want to be
very, very rich,” are nearly useless. But so are overly specific
goals, such as “I want to be chairman of the XYZ Corporation”
or “I want to be a nuclear physicist” or “I want to discover a
cure for the common cold,” because they leave out all the other
values in life.
Jamie Raskin told me, “One of my heroes is a professor at
Harvard Law School named Derek Bell. He told me that it’s
important not to have any specific ambitions or desires. It’s
more important to have ambitions in terms of the way you
want to live your life, and then the other things will flow out of
that.”
What do you want? The majority of us go through life, of-
ten very successfully, without ever asking, much less answering,
this most basic question.
The most basic answer, of course, is that you want to express
yourself fully, for that is the most basic human drive. As one
friend put it, “We all want to learn how to use our own voices,”
and it has led some of us to the peaks and some of us to the
depths.
How can youbest express you?
The first test is knowing what you want, knowing your abilities
and capacities, and recognizing the difference between the two.
Gloria Anderson said, “I always felt it wasn’t right to be like
everyone else. I thought I had to meet different standards and
do different things.” Journalism was an obvious choice of ex-
pression for her, because journalists, by definition, stand apart
from other people. As reporters, they cover the action, rather
than taking part in it, and as editors, they have the opportunity
to speak out on issues they believe in.
Deploying Yourself: Strike Hard, Try Everything