1, #80 - Ambition vs. Contentment

Estimated Read Time: 37 seconds.

Do you know the moral of the story of Icarus? To recap: Boy gets wings, is warned not to fly too high, flies too high, dies. So, the moral is: Don’t fly too high.

Right?

Not so fast.

It turns out, this condensed version misses the point. Here’s the warning from the original:

“I warn thee, Icarus, fly a middle course:
If thou goest too low, the waters will weigh thee down;
if too high, the sun’s fire will burn thee.
Steer between both!”

One of my favorite questions to ask people is: Which is more important—ambition or contentment?

What do you think?

For an overachiever like me, the risk of flying too low seems obvious—settling or complacency or just giving up. But I also can’t ignore an increasing correlation I’ve seen between flying high and burning out.

In life and in flight, it seems the challenge is learning to steer the middle course.

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Insight inspired by Ovid, and Terry Jeffords for bringing it to mind, recently. Thanks, Tiny Terry!