“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt,26th US President(1901-1909)

Ambition and happiness. Are these two mutually exclusive or is there a correlation that exists between them. Ambition is the all consuming flame of achievement which propels you forward to achieve great heights. It needs to be differentiated from pretension which suggests ardent desire for recognition of accomplishment often without actual possession of the necessary ability and therefore may imply presumption. Ambition is essentially a desire for personal advancement or preferment, a desire nonetheless which entails sadness in its wake. A desire devours the energies of the subject making him think of nothing else but the object of desire. So can happiness ensue from a desire, like ambition. Or are they diametrically opposite. Happiness or sadness depends on the properties of the object of desire as well. Each one of us has the freedom to choose the object of his/her desire, but do we really choose the desire judiciously or just fads which we were tricked into believing to be our wants.When the object of desire turns out to be not that lucrative or not as wonderful as we had imagined it to be we feel sad because we felt that after achieving the goal we would feel happy, which is not the case.
Happiness lies in identifying the little and the not so little wants and then working day and night to realize those wants. Once we realize the want,they no longer remain active wants. This leads to seeking another want to be identified and again the same routine of nonstop effort. Perhaps this is why ambition and happiness are interlinked because there is no absolute happiness, just the pursuit of it...

P.S. Haven't slept all night. The fairies of the night are blurring away with the blazing rays of the morning sun, aah there it was i.e. the sun, but now it is not. Its started raining :( again.