The Limits of Ambition.

30 Rock ended tonight, and that demands 5,000 words and a copious amount of cheese. But I'm going to limit myself, because if 30 Rock taught us anything, it's that you don't have time to give everything its due, and what it really deserves.

30 Rock has been with me my entire adult life. I discovered the show when I was looking to kill some time the summer before I started graduate school in Boston, and I quickly became addicted while catching up in Season 2, watching a half-dozen episodes a night. It stayed with me through graduate school, where I struggled to unite my goals and hopes with the possibilities and prejudices before me, and it continued on until I entered the job world, which was even more depressing.

When 30 Rock really got into my soul, though, was when I began my time as a young professional. You could only smile every time you heard Liz Lemon say, "You really can have it all!" because that was the battle we all were fighting. Home, work, school, friends -- Liz showed me how to balance, how to fail, and how to really not let it bother you that you can't balance and that you fail, even when you still really care.

The amount of similarities between Liz and I is astounding -- as it is, I'm sure, for any 20-something girl. Liz and I both have a distinct German heritage, which made me especially enjoy those bits in the show, and we both have the same personality, meaning we both tend to have to work with people of another type of personality (the freaking Tracy Jordans of the world). Her family structure, workplace decisions, and hapless love life were also familiar. The only thing I always lacked was a Jack Donaghy, but now that I think of it, I think I do have a Jack in my life. It's either a blend of my brothers or that ambition demon that sits on my shoulder.

Ah, ambition. That's what it was all about, wasn't it? Wesley Morris wrote a great piece for Grantland on 30 Rock, and while he had many fine points about the overall show, and especially its implications on race and the larger TV culture, my favorite parts were when he revealed how the show so truly reinforced that it was a mockery of itself. Tina Fey is a great writer, and a great actor, and Alec Baldwin, the other stars of the show, and the writers behind it are all excellent. But in their excellence, they chose to glory not in what we could do if we could create our own perfect world, but rather to glory in how we create just something in a world that is never perfect.

Morris calls 30 Rock "a farce about the pragmatic limits of ambition," and he couldn't be more right. The show is all about ambition -- Jack's amibition, Liz's ambition, even the skewed ambition of the Tracys and Jennas and Kenneths. It's ambition not necessarily to be the best, or to claim some great something, but rather to take that untouchable thing you've always chased. Money and fame (Tracy and Jenna), happiness by triumph (Jack), or the perfect job and perfect world (Liz) -- it's all each person's desperate heave to get that thing, only to find that life doesn't allow it, or that you can't keep the other things you've gained (like people) when you're chasing that ambition.

As the great Conor Oberst says: Ambition is a loaded line. But we've all got it deep within us, even though it manifests differently in everyone. In 30 Rock, it played out in every life in varied ways, and in those ways, it showed a true amalgamation of real life.

The show's final episode tonight summed up the characters' pursuit perfectly, but it also did it in a way that was very 30 Rock. That is, it mocked the face of regular TV writing, made fun of culture, turned the tables, and threw curveballs. Yet, also in true 30 Rock spirit, it did not do it in a mean way, or to give a sense of loss. Instead, 30 Rock gave its supporters one final nod of the head to its true theme, that even amid the crap and everything not working out the way it should, good still happens.

That's the lesson of life, and the lesson of ambition if handled properly. Ambition is a demon if you can never tame it, but it's a joy when you can chase it and then settle for less, not feeling any loss in doing so. Liz long lamented that she couldn't actually "have it all," but when left with less than having it all, she discovered she had gained what she really wanted. Jack couldn't ever fulfill his ambition or find true happiness, but he discovered enough of himself that he finally found peace, which is what he was really looking for all along.

30 Rock fulfilled the John Lennon-bred cliche that life is what happens to while you're busy making other plans, but it did it in a way that affirmed that, if you pay attention to life as it's happening, even when you're chasing those other plans, you can have both the life and the hope for the future plans. You really can have it all.

Liz chased her dreams of a good show, and of having a family, and she never ended up with utopia. But she was able to discover richness in the pursuit, and to find at the end that she had what she was hoping for -- not a perfect family and a stress-free life, but a family, and a life. During her long, tiring road, she hated all the struggles with Tracy and battles to get things to just go right once. But she also loved her night cheese, and that funky middle-of-life area she got to live in for so long. When she finally reached her dreams, she knew she had to move on and take them, because that was what she had been aiming for all that time. But it didn't diminish that she knew she loved what she left behind, which is something that many people never pause to realize. They're too busy hoping to get to the next stage that the good parts of the struggle never show through.

The 30 Rock ending comes at a point where I'm transitioning from that blur of a life where everything is unbalanced and wrong to something that's starting to resemble the life I've imagined. Of course, it could all go up in smoke easily, but it looks as if I've left my 3 a.m. nights eating fat food in front of 30 Rock behind for good. I hated those nights so much, getting home all alone and knowing I wouldn't be able to see people the next day because they'd be working while I was free, and they'd be free while I was working. But I also loved those days, because there was a certain adventure to living that desperado life where I just had to make it happen all the time -- and then I got to go home, and be alone, and eat night cheese.

You hate it so much when you're going through it, and you know you want to -- and have to -- aspire to something more. But you also love it, because it's an excuse to not have everything perfect for a while, and to know that every crappy moment is preparing you for the time when things really will start to fall into place. Better yet, you're learning what you really do want, and ambition becomes less a tormenter and more of an impetus, a place to funnel ideas and then pick the one you decide you like after the hard slog, rather than being chained to wanting them all.

I'm going to look back on my Liz Lemon years knowing they clarified a lot of what I really wanted, and that they were fun in themselves even while adding up to what my future ended up being. But above that, I'm going to always love this time, and 30 Rock, for teaching me that ambition is not a foe. It's a tool -- a great, big, Jack Donaghy-acronymed tool whereby we strive and fall and slip and hold on and then see what matters.

Liz Lemon may be off the air, or teaching improv to senior citizens on cruise ships. But she's spawned more than that bespectacled granddaughter.

Her little children are running around Boston, further enthused and prepared to struggle for balance but loving it when it fails. Yes, Lemon: Blerg. We really can have it all.

Tina Fey is my hero

The Time 100 *If not chosen as an honoree, please write shamelessly about yourself in the paragraph about the honoree

I read the Time 100 issue this year especially fast, because I realized how this issue of the usually wonderful periodical has become much like the Who's Who recognition for teachers and students: a moneymaker for the host company only somewhat attached to the accomplishments of the honorees within.

This year, however, I noticed another feature of the Time 100 issue: the tendency of the people writing the blurbs about the honorees to be extremely self-serving in their comments.

Every recognition followed this basic form:
"When I was feeding hungry children in _______ (choose one: Africa, Romania, India, etc.), or saving the world through my technological/economical/business (circle one) accomplishments with ______ (any past device or theory can be filled in here, as long as it is still obsolete and the person writing the blurb has been sequestered to writing blurbs about people more successful than them), ________ (honoree's name) said hi to me once. So, I am qualified to write this piece, and I have to say that the world is a better place not only because of all the work people like me have done in the past, but also because ________ (honoree's name) has done some nice stuff this year. (And since this is a popularity contest, the editors list some accomplishments of the honorees here, usually including a "breakout performance on ______" or some Twitter feed, since Twitter is the barometer of millions of sane people making informed choices on who their role models should be.)"

They weren't really written like that, but after reading quite a few of them, I was surprised by how many times I was trying to read about the featured person and instead found myself looking for the author's name, so I would know who this ignanimous "I" was that kept protruding into the tribute about the real honoree.

Some snippets are quoted below.

One of my favorites: Ted Turner on T. Boone Pickens: "Boone and I have a lot in common. We've both made a lot of money, and we've also given a lot of it away."

On Lauren Zalaznick, by Martha Stewart: "Here was a businesswoman with a keen sense of how to build a brand, a woman with a sharp sense of humor, who's as tall as I am and as strong as I am and very, very cool." (Then she talks more about herself, which was moderately interesting, but I feel bad for this Lauren lady, because (no joke) only 50 percent of the column was talking about her.)

And from Ted Sorensen, a guy I don't recall, on Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau: "True, Favreau is only 27. But when I entered the White House at 32, I was thankful that I had the energy and idealism necessary to withstand the repeated crises, criticisms and lengthy late-night hours of emergency meetings." What?

And finally: Bono's piece on George Clooney: "Well, it starts with his strategic sensibility, and his almost peculiar ability to sublimate his ego to win a point — something completely out of character and perhaps against the law for a performer. (I should know...)." No joke; he wrote that.

My point is that if you're so good at whatever, you shouldn't have to tell us. And if you're upset at not getting chosen, you have two options: (A) bribe the Time editors or (B) work harder and make the list next year; it's just a popularity contest.

Another good one was Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as he so obviously fought for the life of the New York Times by puffing up Carlos Slim, who just bought into the Times and needs to keep his cash involved or the Gray Lady will go under.

Regardless, the graphics and presentation in this year's issue were fantastic.

And there were two blurbs I thought were written well: Tina Fey's (by Alec Baldwin) and Tom Hanks' (by Meg Ryan). Although I oppose the posterization of these people in such a dog race, I did enjoy reading about them.

(And please tell me Tina Fey is on the list because of "30 Rock" and other accomplishments, not just because she made faces and dressed up like that lady that lives a couple states over.)

More Time 100 junk pieces