Sacrifice with no Point Honors No One

There is a Greenday song with the line, “When you really suffer, it shows that you really care, right? Yeah.”

It’s in a song about a guy in an incredibly abusive relationship that he should absolutely leave, but he talks himself into staying because…

Well, because otherwise he might have to find someone else to have sex with and to brag about ‘having.’

So he puts up with someone who stands him up without calling, only shows up when she wants something, and badmouths him whenever. But he’s suffering, therefore he cares.

Except, no. That isn’t why he is suffering. He is suffering for no reason whatsoever. She has no reason to change, and everyone knows he’s an idiot. No one is getting anything out of his sacrifice.

But our society insists otherwise. We frequently revel in pain for pain’s sake, sacrifice for no particular cause or very little gain. This is ridiculous.

What I Mean

My go-to examples are co-sleeping and breastfeeding past a year. The benefits are negligible, and the sacrifice in resources and comfort are often high. A baby in the bed kicks, and breastfeeding means being glued to a chair for hours out of a week, but people hold these up as signs of good parenting and find all kinds of excuses to do them.

Counterproductive

I could find many more examples in many fields. The above were just the ones I could think of. They all share the same assumption: you should sacrifice time and energy, suffer some, and then you will…what? Bond with your kid?

You bond with people just by spending time with them. The time that he or she is spending attached to your breast or kicking you awake could be spent learning about the world or, you know, sleeping.

You could be cleaning house or otherwise getting your act together while the child is not physically attached to you, and I remind you that a filthy house is dangerous to little kids.

And I have to point out that these parenting strategies sometimes go hand in hand with ignoring the spouse until he or she asks for a divorce because they are tired of waiting for you to pencil them into your schedule. It is not great for children to have parents that don’t get along.

In other words, your misplaced sacrifices are resources that could be put to better use, and that inefficiency can undo the very thing you are trying to accomplish.

Slow Everyone Else Down

How many times has an intense thriller involved a character suddenly getting injured, causing the entire blasted party to slow to a crawl?

As in stories, as in real life. The person who injured themselves in a sacrificial act, is groggy from lack of sleep, or insists on stopping everything to perform their dumb sacrifice, makes everyone around them jump through hoops to get things done. They have to pick up the slack and also, frequently, carry the sacrificing party. Think of Margery Kempe wailing at a pilgrimage stop and her fellow pilgrims finally having to ditch her to finish the trip.

Remember the Opportunity Cost

Anything you choose to invest in one place cannot be invested somewhere else. Some genius is going to say that the love will come back four-fold or some such, but, generally, that genius is wrong. That resource you spent is never coming back, and love isn’t something that gets handed out as a reward for suffering.

Your sacrifices should get you something. Should further some goal. Do you insist on losing sleep to your kids? Don’t worry, you will get your opportunity when he runs a 101-degree fever and has to be rushed to the hospital. Then you get a healthy kid for your trouble. Or you can take the kid to a concert when she turns 17 and get a happy kid for your trouble.

A sacrifice that nets you nothing is just self-inflicted pain and a burden on everyone else. Which makes the person making the sacrifice, like the guy in the song, a sucker with no self-esteem. We need to quit pretending otherwise.