Earn It

When you finish the experience that a new story brings you, oftentimes you are left to ponder the consequences it has left upon you.  The consequences of how it weakened you, and the consequences of how it strengthened you.

I finished a wonderful story that begins and ends with the meaning and truth behind true sacrifice.  So many people believe that sacrifice is something negative.  It is something that you must give up and lose to get something you feel that you need.

They think that it is buying a stuffed bear to give to a crying child, or it is working a job you despise in order to put food on your table.  And not even that much food.

However, to truly understand what sacrifice is, you have to be willing to learn and to understand.  You have to have the desire to come to see things as they truly are and can be.  That sacrifice isn't giving up something to get something you feel you need.  It's not giving a child a toy to keep them from crying, it's giving them your stuffed bear to soothe them and see them smile and giggle and laugh.  It is working hard at a job to come home at the end of the day and enjoy the fruits of your labor with those that you hold most dear.

Sacrifice is giving up what you think you want for something so much more than you can imagine: what you truly need.  And understanding that no sacrifice is worth giving up those you love for anything.

It was truly an amazing story and it strengthened me, and it weakened me.  It strengthened my resolve to protect and love and care for my family.  It strengthened my resolve to work hard at my dream and never give up, no matter what.  To find a way no matter how difficult it may be, even if you keep having to get back up and start over again and again and again.

And it weakened me because I am human.  And I will be thrown down again and again no matter how hard I work to achieve something.  I will always get knocked down.  And the more important the matter is, the more I can expect resistance.  That is difficult to accept.  But if I keep getting up, I will never, never lose.  And sacrificing my right now, my small and meek endeavors, can turn into so much more.

Dreams are amazingly powerful things.  They are what created our homes, our cities, our entire world.  But a dream at the cost of that which is most important is a mere empty stupor.  It is cold and meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

I want my dream to mean something.  I want to learn from the sacrifices I made to earn it.