If you're working a job you hate to support a family you love, you aren’t making a sacrifice for your family. You're choosing this because you'd rather have your family eat dinner than not somehow tolerate your job for 40 hours a week.

The desire to see your family go to bed with a full stomach outweighs that of quitting your dreaded job (if it means no more dinner for the family). Hence you choose to persevere. Call it a sacrifice if you will, but a choice if you realize the agency behind the things you do.

Choice transcends sacrifice. When you’re choosing to trade off a relatively inferior option for something more meaningful, it’s not apt to call it a sacrifice.

Similar for people in the army (all of whom I have high respect for). “Sacrifice” won’t capture the essence of their work. Choosing to risk their lives, fight and portray their admiration for the country will.

When I hear something along the common lines of “all the sacrifices he made…” I cannot help but feel sorry for the man who chose his actions that seemed sacrificial to all those who could not understand the true meaning of and purpose behind his actions.

With higher value comes choice, not sacrifice.

The Amazing Things & Ideas List

• Books I’m reading:

- The Mind of God by Paul Davies

- Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering by Cameron Hanes, Joe Rogan (Foreword), David Goggins (Afterward) (Audiobook)

• What really matters:

“It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

― J.K. Rowling

• Debunking the “finish your education” myth:

“Education isn't something you can finish.”

— Isaac Asimov

• On choosing our measure of success:

Lifestyles — a blog post by Morgan Housel

Posts published on my blog this week

• Nature and humans: a false dichotomy:

Is human intervention “unnatural”? If yes, does that make it bad? Or is, as may seem obvious, human intervention nothing but natural since it is a product of natural phenomena, rather nature itself?

Inspired by a live discussion between Slavoj Žižek and Yuval Noah Harari on the topic “Nature: friend or foe?”, this post explores these questions.

• Why this isn’t the “most important century”:

This post is a critique to Holden Karnofsky's “most important century” blog post series. Read why this isn’t the “most important century”.

Thank you for reading.

Onward,
Arjun

Blog | Twitter