2006年专八英语作文真题:Ambition

What is ambition? Answers to this question may differ from person to person. Joseph Epstein, a famous American writer, gave his reply as he said, “We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide (so) that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. No matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. … In the end, forming our own destiny is what ambition is about.”I totally agree with Epstein. Life is a series of choices and decisions. Of course, you cannot choose your parents, your color, your race or your nationality. Nor can you decide the brand of diaper you use while you are a baby, or the kindergarten you go to as a kid. They are choices and decisions of your parents. But as you grow up, you begin to make your own decisions. You choose the brand and style of your shoes, you choose the girl or the boy you date with, you choose the cat or the lizard you keep as a pet and you choose the college or university you go to. What is critical here is that you should make sure that you are the decision maker of your own life and do not pass on the right to others, even your parents, because, as Joseph said, ambition is to form your own destiny. A story goes that a disabled young man managed to reach the peak of every famous high mountain in the world before he was 28. He did all this just as his parents told him to do in their will. But the young man committed suicide in the end and his last words were:“now I have nothing to do with all my goals achieved and my fame well established. I have no new goals.” The major cause of the young man’s ruin was, I believe, his lack of consciousness or ability to make his own decisions. Actually, a number of personalities in history at both home and abroad went against the will of their families and risked being discarded by them, but they had scored tremendous success in the end. Chairman Mao Zedong is a case in point. When he was young, he plunged himself into the tide of revolution in China, though his father objected to his choice. Finally, Chairman Mao fulfilled his ambition and led Chinese people to success. To sum up, we should not let ourselves easily influenced by others; we should be the master of our own fate.