The tryst between Ambition and Love – Should something give?

It’s 2:00 AM and you, my love is asleep.

Alone, curled up with the blanket which could occupy two, shielding yourself from the cold airburst of the air conditioner.

As the night light falls and illuminates the sharp features of your face, I look at you and I lose my heart to you once again.

Is this right, I ask myself?

Is it right, that I put you through this, put you through what I go through?

There always was a yearning within my heart.

A yearning to be something bigger than what I am.

A yearning to be that someone.

The yearning from the heart, the emotion of which, is defined by humanity to be ambition.

Is it right, for my ambition to thwart the reciprocation of love which is the basic right of every human?

Yes, I love her but doesn’t my ambition stop from fulfilling the vows I took before man and God, with her by my side?

But then, hasn’t ambition been the definition that defined me all throughout my life?

Wasn’t this journey to fulfilling this yearning been the predominant goal of my life to date?

Yes, the yearning defined me. Defined not my entire adulthood but my childhood as well.

But then, what she did was much more, wasn’t it?

While ambition and the pursuit of something larger than myself covered the yearning of my heart; There always was an emptiness.

An emptiness in the pit of my heart. Something which reared it’s head in the dead of the night and has been a part and parcel of your adulthood until I met her.

She filled the emptiness that defined a part of my life for so long, but with her near, seems like a distant past.

She filled the emptiness within the short time she knew me, whilst the yearning of my heart still keeps continuing unabated.

Is running behind this yearning unfair to my love?

Is it unfair to her, that she goes to sleep alone, and I crawl back to bed during times the sky itself is unsure if it day or night?

Is it unfair to her, that I am unable to reciprocate the love she shares?

Is it unfair to her, that I am consumed by a raging yearning which even after all these years of trying I could not define?

All I know is that this yearning will never end, and I am scared that one day I will fail.

But then do I go behind this yearning or do I put a stop and take a stand with the woman who filled the emptiness in my heart?

Can ambition co-exist with love?

Can a person of ambition, go ahead fall in love and reciprocate the expanse of love he receives?

I do not know.

“She understood who I was before she agreed to spend her life with me,” I tell myself.

“This is what she signed up for”

As this train of thoughts come forward and try to calm my fractured soul, a small voice peeps and says, “Lies, can calm your soul. But not your heart”

Lies?

Yes, lies.

She knew what she signed up for.

But did I know what I was signing up for?

Did I know or understand the flood of love that was to be a part of my life ever since I held her hand?

Did I know she will be the beacon of hope & reason when my ambition puts me at a crossroads?

Did I know here mere presence can calm me and her smile can make English words inadequate to explain the sheer quantum of love shared?

With all this there, am I doing enough?

Am I doing enough, to my love, as she sleeps alone in a blanket meant for two?

Isn’t it my job to join her and the dream world together?

Rather, what’s the point of going to bed at 2:00 AM as she sleeps, and I enter a world of guilt?

Should something give?

Can’t ambition and love coexist?

I knew she was the one in the first hour that I met her.

Preposterous, you might say.

In One hour? That’s a fools answer.

But yet in my case it came

It came from a lifetime of meeting people and putting your heart out there, I’d say.

You get your heart broken enough times, you get an inkling of who will be your soulmate when the time comes.

Yes, there were some before her. But, within the first hour of conversation, I knew there will be none after her.

It’s a funny thing, love.

It comes and hits you when you least expect it.

It did not hit me when I wanted it.

It did not complete the circle when I when I wanted it to be completed.

It hit me when I thought it wasn’t for me and yearning and ambition was all I had in life.

In a funny way, love took me to this woman who by her smile covered up the dark pit of emptiness within my heart.

She was the one, I finally walked the aisle with.

She was the one with whose name I took my vows under the eyes of God and Man.

I should complete her, shouldnt I?

Maybe, she was supposed to be the fixed point under which my life prevails.

As I thought so, the yearning hit back and said, “Not so fast dear one. There is something bigger over that ledge.”

Ambition reared its head again.

A dream of undefined life which I pursued on one side and fulfilment of my life on the other side.

Ambition on one hand and love on the other.

Can I balance both?

Or is it to be one or the other?

Can I walk towards my undefined ambitious path which has an extreme high degree of probability of failure with her, my love by my side?

Or is ambition and love two separate sides of a coin, destined never to meet?

Or is it the story of Josephine and Napoleon, where he carved the word “Destiny” in their rings but spent their life apart for Napoleon’s ambition?

Will I succeed in both or fail everywhere?

Is success in at-least one ambition or love considered a true success?

Will success in one suffice?

I do not know.

But it’s almost 3:00 AM now.

I know one thing for sure though.

I might not be there when she goes to sleep.

But, I sure as hell will be there when she awakes.

And then again, tomorrow night, let this cycle of thought continue.