Ambition by Christopher Nosnibor

What do you want from life?

It’s a genuine question. Everybody wants something, however modest.

So, what is it that you want?

Something? Or nothing?

Yeah?

Then why is it you do what you do? Endlessly grinding out the same meaningless monotony, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year?

Have you no motivation?

Have you no ambition?

Have you no pride?

Are you really content with things the way they are?

You can blame the system, you can blame circumstance.

You can blame failed relationships, blame your parents.

Blame your job, your finances.

Blame your partner, your schooling, your underactive thyroid or your anaemia.

Anything to deflect from the fact you’ve spent the last ten years crawling to the same dismal job, returning home and slobbing out with a takeaway in front of the TV.

Eastenders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, I’m a Celebrity, Big Brother, Come Dine With Me, The Great British Bake-Off, Strictly Come Dancing, Jersey Shore, The Only Way Is Essex, Downton Abbey.

Your life’s mapped out in endless hours of lowbrow entertainment, interspersed with Friday and Saturday night spent in shit wine bars and dismal meat market night clubs, same sad faces every week, and every week they’re another week older, another few pounds heavier, another week more haggard and lined by the fags and booze.

You go home sad and alone after a quick drunken dancefloor fumble that leads to nothing, stopping off for a kebab or a pizza.

You stuff your face till you puke and Sunday’s another hungover write off and you want to die and then it’s Monday morning and the whole cycle repeats.

It’s ok, it’s not right, it’s not fun but it’s what everyone else does and you’ve got your friends and your iPad, Netflix on the 60” flatscreen.

And is this what you wanted?

Really?

Is this what you wanted?

Is this what you recited to your class when you were twelve, when you had to write about what it would be like to be grown up and what you wanted to do, what you wanted to be?

Didn’t you say you wanted to be a pop star, a film star, an artist or in media?

Ok, so you can’t always get what you want.

You can’t always be what you want.

You come to realise your limitations.

You come to appreciate what’s actually achievable.

But when did you set your sights so low?

Are you really happy to be doing what you’re doing now, and have been for what feels like forever?

Do you feel envy for those school friends who went on to become doctors, academics, writers, lawyers, programme analysts?

Or are you really happy you avoided all that hard work so you can spend your time with your fat arse parked on a sagging sofa?