Sacrifice

There is nothing free in this world; we have to work for everything which we want. We have to sacrifice our life for everything such as effort, time etc. There may be some ads; buy one, get one free. Even so, we have to spend money, don’t we? There is an expression “The bigger we sacrifice, the bigger we will be rewarded”. But it doesn’t mean we do for reward; reward means result.

We can see how we sacrifice in our life since we were young; we had to go to school to learn how to live a life. When we grew up, we have to sacrifice our life to work, making a living. The more we sacrifice the more reward we gain. To support this explanation, there is the Chinese folktale which can illustrate how people sacrifice well. Here is the story:

Once upon a time, on earth there was no sun so everywhere was covered by the darkness. The earth was gloomy, there was neither beauty nor light. The darkness hid demon, evil, badness etc. People and living beings were in trouble everywhere; bad people harmed good people and big animals attacked small animals. Then the most senior man in the village assembled for meeting how to solve this big problem. One man said, “We must go and ask the sun to give light to our world”. People agreed and asked, “Who is going to do this great task? Because a journey is very difficult and dangerous, especially it will take 70 years”. A 10 year old boy raised his hand and volunteered, saying, “Sir, I will do that job”. People said, “No, this hard job cannot give to a child”.

While they were discussing, a pregnant lady said, “Sir, please let me take this great task. If I cannot do, my baby will complete this job”. People saw that and agreed, “Yes, it is reasonable. If she cannot do, her baby will continue doing this job. This is a chance, we will have the sun shine to our world”. After the agreement, the pregnant lady prepared herself for a long journey. All people saw her off at the end of the village and wished her success in the great task.

Then she made a journey and got help from people a long the way throughout her journey. When the time passed by almost nine months, she gave birth to a son and took good care of him. She took a journey another twenty years and she died. The son continued his mother’s task for fifty years. Finally, he was able to complete the job, he met the sun and asked him to shine to the world. The sun accepted the demand and agreed that he would shine his light to the world for 12 hours a day. “That was very kind of you, thank you very much indeed”, the boy said and started his journey back home.

Some people, who lived in the village waited for the sunshine, died, but the matter was told to the next generation with hope. And one day the sun rose in the morning, people are very happy and knew that the lady and her son were able to finish the great task. They celebrated the big success everywhere. When the light came on earth, it chased away the darkness. The evil or demon had to hide itself and fierce animals went away into deep jungle. They could come out after the sunset. This was good enough because people were not worried for the whole day.

Since then people worked, farming, cutting woods, and fishing etc. by day and stayed at home after the sunset. They thanked the lady and her son for their task, helping the world to have the light. So every year, there was big celebration for them who did such a great job to the world.

This story shows that the great task needs the big sacrifice and also needs unity and harmony. These virtues always produce the greatest result as the ancient people, the lady and her son did. This teaches us that the big sacrifice is done, the great reward is received. That sounds reasonable, isn’t it?