Beyond the Ambitions of Our Younger Selves

Musings on Gilmore Girls, global impact, and shifting mindsets.

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A few months back I started re-watching Gilmore Girls, from the beginning.

I used to watch the show after school with my grandmother, lapping up the whole offering, from the love of Luke’s coffee, the seemingly ever-autumnal, cosy scenery, and the relatable single-mom-and-daughter household.

Perhaps most importantly though, I could identify with, and look up to, Rory Gilmore.

I wasn’t at private school, and thankfully did not have an arch nemesis intent on always being one step ahead of me. But we were both never without a book, had Friday night dinners with our grandparents, and I too was the kind of kid on the school council by ten, and later voted Head Girl by teachers and fellow classmates.

I had ambition. Ambition to do good, meaningful work. To speak and to write and to make an impact.

Rory’s parallel ambition was casually but assertively explained to her new headteacher on the first day at Chiltern, in only the second episode of Season 1, as she said:

"I want to go to Harvard and study journalism and political science."

“On your way to being…?”

“Christiane Amanpour.”

This seconds-long exchange, re-watched by my 30-year-old self, stopped me in my tracks.

There on the sofa, bowl of noodles in one hand and glass of red in the other, I was taken right back to a younger me who too thought I would study the world and learn to write of it in a way that sparked change; of perceptions, of policy, of peoples’ lives.

Though I was unlikely to have known who Christiane Amanpour was the very first time I’d have watched this episode in the early 00’s, I recall at the tender age of seven making my own newspaper to report on 9/11. Sketching a burning twin towers onto a lined piece of A4, as it continuously flashed across the TV.

There was an intent to note down what I was seeing, hearing, learning, and inform.

As I watched Rory share dreams of a similar notion, and rewound to watch the scene again, I felt both a sinking disappointment and a wake up call to my own career trajectory.

Opening Doors

Studying Politics and International Relations at university opened up new ideas about who and what I - a girl from the Welsh Valleys - could be. Through four years of learning how the world works, with a sort of informal minor in international development, I daydreamed through lofty ambitions of walking in the corridors of power, negotiating peace processes left, right and centre.

During an industry year out, working in the aid sector, I got a sense that it wasn’t as easy as the theory might have us believe. The hours were long, the arguments complex, but the ambition to really make a difference persisted.

A lunchtime stroll by (then) Barack’s place, on a work trip to Washington DC 10 years ago.

The job I graduated into was intended to be temporary. A foot in the door of the UK policy space, blended with event management, while I figured out my next steps. I thought I was saving for a masters, in something that felt like a step up from the undergrad, or to hone in on journalism.

But I worked hard, and that came with promotions and pay rises which consciously or otherwise overtook the focus of my ambitions. The nature of the work allowed for a frequent sense of achievement, and I got to work with inspiring people (and some… less so). The longer I stayed the more scope I had to shape the role, and while that came with greater pressure, it also meant more writing, interviewing, and giving a platform to deserving voices.

And so, I never did the masters.

As my 20s rolled on, it felt less and less like the right time to leave a stable job to get into more debt (will I ever not be paying off my student loan?!) or take an unpaid internship at a global body that brings in enthusiastic young things keen to change the world but doesn’t want to pay them for it.

When I eventually did leave for pastures new, almost two years ago, it was for a squiggle into something related, but new. Less policy and more practical. Less gathering and more delivering. Impact in a new way, I hoped.

The change has come with many bumps in the road, and although, as I have written before, I do believe it has purpose, day-to-day it does not feel like my life’s work, as I once thought my job should.

Which is why I think I felt so shook by Rory’s simple but ambitious statement, of Harvard and politics and Amanpour. Because in a mere moment, as I sought out entertainment to escape reality, I was in fact brought back to my reality of having meandered away from the ambitions I once had, and the ideas on how I would make an impact.

Ambitions New and Old

Working through this inner stirring over recent months, I’ve acknowledged that I’ve not so much lost or forgotten about that inherent want to do good, meaningful work, and have tried to reconcile that I may still be fulfilling my underlying intentions, without work and/or life looking like how I once thought it might.

Years have passed, new experiences have come to light, and my ambition has grown and altered with them - in ways younger me couldn’t have imagined.

I care about my work, about being good at it. Yes, even the corporate stuff. Life would be easier if I didn’t, if I could log in and out without feeling like my value that day came at least in part from the quality and quantity of outputs I had managed to deliver.

But I am also now ambitious about work outside of that of a day job.

Exploring freelance opportunities supporting people and organisations doing good work - not least

Lazy Women

and

Tanya Lynch

- and discovering that this is work that feels both natural and rewarding.

Writing and publishing, for myself and for others, without that journalism degree. Coming to Substack was a nudge to do this more, to treat writing with the respect it deserves, and give myself a reason to get into the unique state of flow it serves up more often.

But there has always been a sense of wanting to write and publish something here that matters; something that helps. Sometimes I think I manage that; other times I feel I fall short.

I am not, after all, Christiane Amanpour.

And yet…

In writing this piece I recalled one of my biggest publishing achievements (despite it now being something I often forget about) of having my undergraduate dissertation published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal the year I graduated.

I worked hard on that paper, pouring myself into months and months of researching and reading hundreds (literally!) of books and documents and articles to pull together something well-informed and precise in its arguments. I hoped for a good grade, and the satisfaction of having produced something well written. Being published never crossed my mind, until the tome was handed back by a smiling and encouraging professor who suggested it really was that good.

Now that my professional focus has moved away from what that work focused on - a practical critique of counter terrorism policy, rooted in all sorts of theories and a take on epistemology - it no longer feels tied to my thinking around how I am, or how I am not, changing the world.

But as of last week, Google Scholar tells me this paper has been cited 44 times in other people’s work, as recently as last year, despite its publication in 2016, and in documentation for and from notable organisations, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Maybe there’s a bit of Amanpour in me after all?

Looking Back to Look Forward

But being someone or something else is not the point here.

It’s about being ourselves, striving for what we want, and really tapping into what that means.

We may look up to our Amanpours, our Gilmores - who was it for you? - but they already exist (on screen if not in life). So what can our admiration for them, and our ambitions tied to them, tell us about what we want for and from life, and indeed work.

Can we look to fulfil such ambitions outside of the traditional realms of boardrooms and broadsheets, opening ourselves up to new ideas on how we might make a meaningful impact?

I am a big believer in the butterfly effect, and the ripples that can come from small actions and interactions leading to something much more. Change can’t always be on a global scale. Impact can’t always be at an international level.

I no longer see myself ending up at the UN. Or becoming a diplomat. Or a groundbreaking war correspondent. I mean, never say never - although it feels too late for some things, I am 30, not 90, so catch me in 10 or 20 years and I may have a totally different take on all this - but right now I think there’s a worthiness in accepting what may not be, and focusing instead on adapted ambition that feels like a better fit for where we are now.

Even Rory ended up at Yale, not Harvard, and though she pursued that journalism career, as the 2016 reboot showed, life wasn’t exactly perfect.

Let’s not be afraid to reimagine the future our younger selves wanted, reevaluate the only paths we deemed worthy, and think about what worthiness means today.

Let’s allow our ambition to adapt, as we adapt.

And listen to what art may be telling us, in the most unexpected moments, even as we look to escape reality.

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