Browning isn't simply cheerleading ambition—he's saying that the gap between desire and achievement is *where meaning lives*, not something to close. Most people treat unfulfilled goals as failure, but he inverts that: the reaching itself, the perpetual incompleteness, is what makes us human and keeps us striving toward something larger than ourselves. A pianist practicing a Rachmaninoff concerto beyond her current ability isn't wasting time; she's experiencing exactly the friction that builds character and purpose. The comfort of only attempting what we can already do well would be a kind of death.