Self sacrifice?
I recently finished reading Twilight. Not a great book, not a bad book, but it got me thinking a bit about the concept of self-sacrifice.
It's definitely a noble concept. The soldier jumping on the grenade to save his unit... the mother working 3 jobs to provide medical care to her kids...etc Bella, the protagonist in Twilight, is a champion at self sacrifice.
It leaves me a bit flat.
Don't get me wrong. Laying down your life for another is huge and I wont belittle the sacrifices people have made over the centuries that have benefited all of us. The concept is just a little overdone these days. Also, there are much more difficult things than dying for someone.
Living, for example.
I don't mean living for someone in the sense of making that person the center of your world and building your entire sense of self worth around that person. That's just another form of self-sacrifice and is ultimately the same as dying. I'm talking about LIVING. I'm talking about going out into the world and building a life with your own goals and triumphs and tragedies and then sharing that life with the people you love.
It's part of the reason I hate Romeo and Juliet so much. The whole play can be summed up in a few good one-liners from Mercutio and big blobs of "My only reason for living is to spout poetry at you." My immediate reaction to such crap is "Wow. You're useless. Can you just hurry up and die?" It took me a long time to pick up Shakespeare again after being forcibly subjected to that cloying drivel in high school, but I digress.
Forrest Gump(the movie. I haven't read the book yet) really captured the idea I'm trying to get across with the character of Lieutenant Dan. Dan believes that his only possible value to the world is in a heroic death. He finds that living is far more painful and challenging than dying, but also far more rewarding, once fully embraced.
So, if you love me, the greatest gift you can give me is to live, not for me, but with me.
It's definitely a noble concept. The soldier jumping on the grenade to save his unit... the mother working 3 jobs to provide medical care to her kids...etc Bella, the protagonist in Twilight, is a champion at self sacrifice.
It leaves me a bit flat.
Don't get me wrong. Laying down your life for another is huge and I wont belittle the sacrifices people have made over the centuries that have benefited all of us. The concept is just a little overdone these days. Also, there are much more difficult things than dying for someone.
Living, for example.
I don't mean living for someone in the sense of making that person the center of your world and building your entire sense of self worth around that person. That's just another form of self-sacrifice and is ultimately the same as dying. I'm talking about LIVING. I'm talking about going out into the world and building a life with your own goals and triumphs and tragedies and then sharing that life with the people you love.
It's part of the reason I hate Romeo and Juliet so much. The whole play can be summed up in a few good one-liners from Mercutio and big blobs of "My only reason for living is to spout poetry at you." My immediate reaction to such crap is "Wow. You're useless. Can you just hurry up and die?" It took me a long time to pick up Shakespeare again after being forcibly subjected to that cloying drivel in high school, but I digress.
Forrest Gump(the movie. I haven't read the book yet) really captured the idea I'm trying to get across with the character of Lieutenant Dan. Dan believes that his only possible value to the world is in a heroic death. He finds that living is far more painful and challenging than dying, but also far more rewarding, once fully embraced.
So, if you love me, the greatest gift you can give me is to live, not for me, but with me.