Sacrifice: Is It Worth It?

Some vocations are not worth the sacrifices they involve.

When you embark on a career, you don’t really understand the ins and outs. You can see what you stand to gain, but you can’t see what you lose. And therein lies the rub: you sacrifice part of your life, only to find that what you’ve gained doesn’t make up for the shortcomings resulting from your sacrifice.

The Various Aspects Of Self-Improvement

A vocation can bring you money, status, prestige, enthusiasm and power. It can also take away your time (especially that spent with loved ones), your rest, your moral or spiritual progress, your peace of mind and sometimes even your honor.

Money For Time, Energy And Sometimes Honor

It’s all a question of balance, but it’s true that a job that pays you a lot will often require you to devote a lot of time to it. There’s a direct correlation between salary and working time. Sometimes, it’s better to sacrifice a little of your purchasing power to reclaim your time. All work invokes the use of our energy, whether mental, physical or emotional. A job can be an energy sink (cf. toxic employment) that leaves no room for the other developments of our being. Certain professions can encourage us to deceive, conceal or abuse the credulity of others. Although they may enrich us, they deprive us of something far more precious: our probity and honor.

Social Status Or Power Versus Spiritual And Moral Progress

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always evil men. John Emerich Dalberg, Lord Acton

For a person of power to retain his morality, he must devote time to preserving his spiritual dimension; otherwise, he may fall into the traps of hubris. Any excess of power and consideration tends to corrupt our nature if not counterbalanced. To counter this, we must learn to “destroy our ego” through philosophy and humility before God. Of course, such a thing takes time, so we come back to the need to preserve our capital of time so as not to neglect the other spheres of our human development.

How Do We Know If It’s Worth The Effort?

If your whole being (mind, soul and body) is calling you to follow a path, then you should make the necessary sacrifices. If the outcome is uncertain and your desire lukewarm, it’s best to accumulate more knowledge on the subject before committing yourself for good. Sometimes, it’s simply by learning more that you discover a real vocation and are ready to give it your all. Other times, you realize that what you were looking for is quite different from what you thought, and it’s best to change your mind. In any case, keep on looking as long as the doubt persists.