Thoughts on Life 3 – Picking a Sacrifice

It’s not unusual, to hear the term ‘sacrifice’ on a day-to-day basis. I am an anime fanatic – those childish cartoons that some adults like me still sit down at the end of a work day to luxuriate in – and I know from these shows how much sacrifice is relevant. From these kiddish toons they mainly involve human sacrifice and things of the sort, pretty dark stuff but kind of relevant to my subject matter. The concept of sacrifice cuts across pretty much every dimension of life that we can think about.

If it’s a student wanting to pass the end of semester exams, he has to put in the time to study thereby bypassing leisure time with drinking buddies on Friday night. If it’s a maestro, he had to spend hundreds of hours on practice to even achieve that status. If it’s a couple raising kids, they have to both be selfless by sacrificing their own personal needs to ensure their kids have an education and a good life. These are but a few examples of how much sacrifice is essential to lead a meaningful life.

So then the question begs on how do we decide which sacrifices are worth shouldering? We definitely need to be shrewd in deciding what we want to take on in the first place. Consider a high-level Scientist who spends most of his life in the lab, or a billionaire CEO who works 84 hours a week. Their lives are unidimensional and they don’t get to spend time with their family or have recreational enjoyments. For them to reach that level of achievement though, it most probably required that level of sacrifice. They both get stupendous income but man, what a life. Is it worth it?

Life as I see it is about picking a sacrifice and moving forward. We can’t always have everything we want when we want it, as though we are living in a utopian world. Choosing a sacrifice requires boldness and wisdom, thinking well into the future about the benefits as well as the detriments. I think that if the benefits outweigh the detriments when choosing a sacrifice, then it would be safe to tread on that path.

Sometimes it could get tough to know for sure the cost of a sacrifice and if it will work out the way you had envisaged in your mind. In those moments it really is about taking the Kierkegaard leap of faith; you don’t really know if it’s going to work out for you unless you try it. I’ve had some people say in the course of their lives that the cost they paid to achieve certain things was too large. That’s how life is. We never know in certainty the depths of what we plunge into.

Picking a sacrifice in career, relationships, or any dimension of life should definitely be worthwhile in the long run. Some people might think that they never want to sacrifice anything, but to have it all. Thinking like this would be naïve and narcissistic. In real life, sacrifices have to be made.

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