Sacrifice

What is sacrifice? It could imply many things: It could involve having to endure extreme pain, mockery, rejection, losing friends and relatives, sleep deprivation, absence from food, and so much more.

Sacrifice is the price to pay for greatness, for success, for love.

Sacrifice and Ethics

• Self-sacrifice keeps skin in the game.
• Personal gains made from the sacrifice of others is the opposite of self-sacrifice.
• Sacrifice done for ourselves alone will die with us.
• Sacrifice done for others have the power to outlive us.

Sacrificing is not prioritization

Do not conflate the two. Sometimes you can have both or all, but it's not always the case. Lions are strong, cheetahs are fast. Eagles are masters of levitation. Turtles are slow, can't fly, can't roll over, they are relatively slow and stupid, yet they dominate in longevity. Nature is a balancing act. Transgenerational survival requires sacrifice and prioritization. Some things you can live without, some things you can't.

Dilemmas of Sacrifice

To live in the moment and sacrifice your future; Or to sacrifice the here and now for a better tomorrow? This is a false dichotomy. You can actually have both. The journey is the destination, and if every moment is treasured and if you aspire to be the best you can be in every moment, you will not only be the best self in that moment, but you will also seed a better tomorrow.

Sacrifice of "Success" Itself

Make the payment reflect the value. They say price is what you pay, value is what you get. You may sacrifice great things, in order to achieve even greater things. But how you achieve something is highly relevant. There are many paths to wealth, but how you manage to build this wealth is even more important than the wealth itself. Victory, winning, could be defined in simple terms, just as defeat and loss could be superficially explained. But a true win might sometimes be to accept the loss. While victory always will be victory, true success can sometimes only be achieved by declining victory and even by accepting defeat. You might argue that there should be a level playing field, but participants enter with varying principles and there is no true equality to anything. Others might not play by your principles, but the least you can do is to stick to your own values. That, or revise your principles if by experience and new knowledge you find reasonable cause to do so. The one thing you don't get to do is to achive true success by ignoring your own values; If victory is within reach, but only through means which conflicts with your values, you'd be wise to wait, perhaps later opportunities will arise. Sacrificing vitory itself is sometimes the right thing to do.