The story today is inspired by the finale of a TV show I loved watching „Vampire Diaries” and is about sacrifice.

I have lived and witnessed in this life many situations where I put others first, where I gave up my wishes and dreams for someone else’s safety or life, or simply for someone else’s sake. Of course my situations were not as close as the ones from the the movie, so no, we did not break each other’s necks, nor anyone died in the end ?.

For many people like Stefan Salvatore, sacrifice is not only a choice, is a lifestyle!

When we think about our blood line, the idea of sacrifice may be easier to comprehend, as we all hear and feel that blood call in our own ways, and want to keep ours safe. It is their scream for help boiling in our own blood. And we cannot ignore it.

But why to sacrifice? Why to give up on me for others? How am I less important, or what makes them more important than me? What is the evaluation criteria? I cannot keep asking myself this questions. And in the next lines I will not be able to give you the answer to all of them, yet, I will do a radiography of the reasons that drive some people to sacrifice themselves for others.

First of all the sacrifice may come from a need for redemption, as a payment of a guilt itching and burning inside. A guilt that one can never overlook, or forgive for themselves.

When we choose to sacrifice for our blood relatives, sometimes the hidden reason behind is just our own selfishness. We chose to save them because we love them, and also we choose to save them because we don’t know how to live without them. So it makes it about us us.

Sacrifice can spring from a wish, a scope, a goal, a need to be a hero, to matter, to have an impact and to be seen. And this is many people’s dream, as we grow with fairy tales that all praise heroes and defeat villains. And in those stories, the heroes and villains are categories with limited tickets. All the rest are either playing the victim or in the best case are simply watchers. Likewise dreams and wishes that are built in our childhood, also we craft then our beliefs and limitations. And beliefs such as „i am not important”, „I am not seen”, „I am not validated”, „I am nothing”, „I am not enough” sometimes even „I am different”or „I am worthless” can lead to self sacrifice too. The mechanism behind is simple: the only way to believe better about oneself is to have others validation and this can lead some people to become people pleasers.

Sacrifice is also an embedded mechanism for survival of our specie. We sacrifice for the stronger gene to make it, for the one with high chances of adaptation, for the potential alpha. You can see the bees doing it for their queen, or mothers who would do it without any second thought for their children.

Sometimes sacrifice can be also a way to quit and say „I am tired”, :I had enough”, „I cannot do more, bare more”.

The thing is that as much as we would like not to, majority of us will sacrifice for our loved ones. We act selfless for them regardless our backend trigger or rationale. We will be willing to pay the price to see them happier, safer, alive. And will do it even without the involvement of our conscious mind. And that is ok. This world desperately needs heroes for as long as there are villains around.

If I look back into my life, I know I did sacrificed a lot. But those choices made me who I am today. I don’t have any regret for any of it. I would probably regret if I didn’t.

But doing it repeatedly, sacrifice becomes not only a choice. For many, as Stefan Salvatore, is a lifestyle.

So I will leave you with some questions today:

What is sacrifice from your perspective: a choice or a lifestyle?

Why do you do it?

And just food for thought what is your favorite role to play: hero, villain or victim?

Stay safe.

M.

Photo credit to Ian Espinosa on Unsplash