The Meaning of Life

There is one world that serves as the cornerstone in everyone’s life. You, me and every other beautiful soul who has ever been graced with the wonderful gift of life is subject to this word. It provides a universal purpose and meaning for your existence and can only be experienced first hand. It cannot be taken, purchased, borrowed, taught or learned. It can only be offered and solely by personal choice.

This word has the unique ability to take you to the highest levels of fame and fortune or strip you of all that you have achieved in a single moment. It can bring about the greatest of joys or the deepest of sorrows and do so in equal measure. It’s what separates the mediocre from the masterful, the sinner from the saint and the coward from the courageous. It paradoxically takes away what you value most so that you can discover what is of the most value.

All other desirable elements of life humbly bow down before it as none of these can be achieved or experienced without first paying homage to this great and powerful word. It is not detectable by science, it cannot be mathematically proven and possesses the amazing ability to defy all forms of logic and reason whenever this word is brought into play.

This word is…

SACRIFICE

Love, victory, success, dedication, harmony, procreation, peace, loyalty, perseverance, ambition, achievement, fame, fortune, spirituality, discovery, and everything else which is considered valuable in your life cannot be known without first knowing sacrifice. Anyone tasked with navigating their family through the many storms of life will find the word “sacrifice” deeply carved in the cornerstone of their family’s foundation for generations to come.

Those who become master artists, virtuoso musicians, graceful dancers and eloquent writers have all sacrificed other extremely important aspects of their lives in order to make it happen. The many who have embarked on a journey for heightened knowledge, space exploration and scientific discovery have all been forced to make painful sacrifices along the way. Every professional football player playing in a Super Bowl suffered years of physical and mental sacrifice before that winning touchdown pass is miraculously caught in the end zone during the final seconds of the game.

The highest perceptual understanding of sacrifice is found within the Christian faith where the Creator of all life offers himself as a personal sacrifice in order to reach the rebellious, free-willed minds of those to which he has created. This unique level of sacrifice stands as the metaphysical gatekeeper between an infinite state of unimaginable love and an endless cycle of mournful despair for all who understand the meaning behind what took place. — John 3:16 (KJV)

Even within our own empirically-based earthly reality, we willingly offer ourselves as a personal sacrifice for the ones we love so that they can continue to live after we are gone. Our history books and news websites are chocked full of those who offered themselves as a sacrifice for the sake of others. —John 15:13 (KJV)

However, sacrifice is not without its own consequences. Just as sacrifice can bring wonderful things into your life that you never believed possible, it can also lay your soul to waste and bring about a myriad of horrors when executed for the wrong reasons. Whereas one man might sacrifice his personal goals, his own ambition and all lustful earthly desires for the sake of his family, another will sacrifice his family and all who love him for a brief moment of sensual pleasure, an easier way of life or a bigger slice of the pie.

Your daily news feed constantly streams stories of those who have sacrificed everyone they have ever loved and everything they might have been for a cheap, selfish pleasure shamefully delivered by way of a needle and spoon. It is a sad reality that our world is also filled with those who would sacrifice everything that life has to offer, even their very soul, for a fleeting moment of shameful self-gratification.

Whether it be the most wonderful experiences that life has to offer or the most excruciatingly painful elements of existence, you will find “sacrifice” at the center of it all.

I have sacrificed many valuable things in my life and have done so for various reasons. Many times these sacrifices were made to discover the very best of what life has to offer. Other times it was to satisfy my own selfish desires because I didn’t have the level of character necessary to know the difference. In the case of this Quora answer, I sacrificed a great deal of time and energy on a warm and sunny Saturday morning in order to make these words available for you to read. There are countless other “life experiences” that I could have chosen over crafting this response, but this is that path I chose, these are the words I have written and this the sacrifice I have made.

…Whether or not my sacrifice will deemed worthy is not known. Only time will tell.