<p>prompt: the old saying, "be careful what you wish for," may be an appropriate warning. The drive to achieve a particular goal can dangerously narrow one's perspective an dencourage the fantasy that success in one endeavor will solve all of life's difficulties. In fact, success can sometimes have unexpected consequences. Those who propel themselves toward the achievement of one goal often find that their lives are worse once "success" is achieved than they were before.</p>
<p>assignment: can success be disastrous?</p>
<p>ESSAY:
Ambition is a characteristic that propells us to achieve greater things. usually it is good, but when one's ambition has been narrowe and focused to a single achievement, ambition can prove detrimental to sucess. Success encompasses many aspects and cannot be reached through the accomplishment of one goal. Many times, that one goal can be mistakenly set, cause one to ignore all other aspects of life, and finally pose the possibility of a single failure.</p>
<p>When I was 8 years old, my piano teacher entered me i a piano competition. He chose a difficult piece to show off my technique, but it was also in a style that I did not like. The types of pieces I loved to play were relaxing nocturnes and Tchaichovsky's Swan lake; the opposite of the Bach minuette that my teacher had chosen. Nevertheless, I loved playing piano and both my teacher and parents had great expectations for me. I practiced long and hard for the competition and was able to master the technique, I was convinced that it was this fast-paced type of piece that would get me to win. On the day of the competition, I watched many others, some had impressive pieces, but many winners still played slow songs. I relized then that what the judges and I wanted was to see a complete expressio nof the song and not technical perfection. My hours of practice had been for nought because I had focused on the wrong goal. It would have been better for me to seek understanding of Bach than to perfect my fingering. This is something I realized in hindsight, but like many other things, I realized that a goal might not accomplish its purpose.</p>
<p>Focusing narrowly also causes one to ignore other aspects of life completely. Becky Sharp, the protagonist of Vanity Fair, for example, focused her entire life on social climbing. Though she was able to grow rich and famous, she ignored her life.</p>
<p>With all goals come the possibility of falling short. When one does, it is better to have other successes to fall back on. If a single ambition were the sole purpose of someone's life, the blow would be hard and dangerous. A failure that many highschool students face is the college admittance of rejection, some have made college admittance their sole goal. Many of them are rejected. Today, the mental breakdowns of many teens come from the stress of this particular goal. It would be much better to develop other interests, and live life for lif instead</p>