Sacrifice

“It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”

-Ayn Rand

I have literally grown up from my teenage, thinking and trying to calculate, the worth of a sacrifice. Life being strange as ever always puts us at a crossroad, where we have to choose between what’s best for us and our loved ones. To add on to the already existing confusion we have tools like education, upbringing and so called rationality to choose the best possible option. So, believe you me friends when I say that that’s one hell of a spot, you really don’t want to be in.

You either choose what you want and make yourself happy at the cost of a lot of other peoples happiness or you choose what others want and make them happy at the cost of your own happiness. Man that’s a tight one.

Well, yes. You do owe a lot to a lot of people who make you what you are today and the obligation for all that is of course there. Isn’t it then perhaps right to choose others happiness over yours, given the situation.

Well, I reckon so.

That’s called free will. You choose others happiness over yours, willingly and by your own accord. Irrespective of them not being aware of your sacrifice, you go ahead and give up that very thing that you really really wanted. That’s one way to go about it. The other way is to put someone right there in front of you and count all that you have done for them and ask them for a sacrifice, back in return. Even if that sacrifice means your own life, your freedom and your very right to choose what you want. How fair is that?

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Here we stand in front of a paradoxical concept of either taking up arms against the irresistible sea of troubles, which indeed are suicidal or to bear them, which definitely will destroy us. Amidst all this I still haven’t been able to calculate the worth of a sacrifice.