Sacrifice: Why This is The Most Abused Concept

Today’s piece is going to sound like Greek from A to Z especially to my fellow Nairobians who out of the heaviness of the hustle and bustle of the Capital have let some common human decency fall by the wayside. The immensity of strife for basic survival seems to take a toll on anything human in the heart.

It is surreptitiously in bad taste to walk around the city light-handed and ready to offer help to anyone in need. As a matter of fact, it is known by all Nairobians that if you see a pregnant lady looking miserable on the roadside at night waving you down – stop at your own risk.

The moment you stop is when a gang of armed men will emerge from the thickets and takeover your car as though it was a shared property. They will take you on a guided tour of the city albeit blindfolded and sans the comfort of the seats – you will be in the trunk with nothing else but your God.

By the time they are done with you, you will be free from the bondage of any cashflow that was in your name before you met the ‘pregnant woman’ and thankful to be alive!

Daylight Robbery

Nairobi is the place where you will be robbed in broad daylight in the middle of the CBD and people will walk past you without paying any attention to you. They will give you sneering looks and dismiss it as a ploy between you and your assailants to try and attract attention of innocent bystanders so as to steal from them.

With all this knowledge, is there hope for humanity in the city? Do we have a few good men and women out there who still possess the innocence and piety of the rural community? People who are neither self-entitled nor self absorbed. People who wake up each day to offer service, to freely give their all, to sacrifice!

Whenever the word sacrifice is mentioned, what comes to my mind is the biblical story of Abraham and his son Isaac! Let us not have a debate about religion on this because that story is known by any literate person, anyone reading this now. Believers or not!

Try to picture Abraham walking to the mountain to go make a sacrifice… note that this was not something unusual. At that time, burnt sacrifices were common and even the small boy knew how it was done to the point that he asked his father: “We have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

His father’s response was simple and to the point: “God will provide.” And the boy did not question his father’s intentions any further neither did Abraham question God’s intention to the point that he was lifting his knife to slaughter his one and only son. Then God provided a lamb instead!

Something Valuable

Sacrifice in the workplace comes nowhere close to the example of Abraham and Isaac but we can sure enough draw parallels between the two events. The first and most upfront one is that in giving or doing sacrifice, something has to be given. You cannot have your cake an eat it! When you sacrifice, it is expected that you not only give or lose something, but it must be something valuable or highly treasured. Anything less does not fall in the threshold of sacrifice. 

For instance, one cannot claim to sacrifice say their time to do work that they had signed up to do in the first place and get paid for. If you are hired to plant 100 tree seedlings and you agree to be paid Ksh.10 for each, no matter how hard you work or how early you wake up to get it done, it does not make the threshold of a sacrifice once you complete the 100 seedlings.

This only becomes a sacrifice when you voluntarily offer to plant another 100 for free or give up the Ksh.1,000 for the initial 100. However, doing exactly what you were supposed to do does not fall anywhere in the realms of sacrifices. You must go above and beyond the expectation.

In the same way, if you are supposed to report to work at 8AM and leave at 5PM, there is an expected daily output for you within the official work hours. Should you succeed to complete all your assigned duties on time and leave to go home by 5PM., you are simply a good employee, you did your job as expected and come payday, you will receive your dues.

If on the other hand you were not able to complete your assigned duties by 5PM and have been asked to or decided on your own to work extra hours to complete your work, should this be termed as sacrifice? Are you entitled to overtime? Should you be given some token of appreciation? I say nay! By so doing, it will be rewarding laziness at work. It will lead everyone to hoard their work and push it to afterhours so that they can receive double payment for the same job. He or she will be paid for the day and then again for the overtime for work that was supposed to be done earlier in the day. That is highway robbery and must be held in check.

Sacrifice as Art and Science

I look at sacrifice as both an art and a science. As an art, a sacrifice is the genuine intention from the heart to go out of one’s way to give or perform far and beyond expectations even when the promise of a return is not guaranteed. Which is always the case most times.

On the other hand, as a science, a sacrifice is an absolute game where one thing is given up for another and that which is given up cannot be taken back. Sacrifice and reward when looked at in this way are mutually exclusive. Returning to the example to Abraham’s burnt sacrifice, the goat that God provided was burnt to ashes, nothing left of it. The same would have been true about his son had he held his end with the son’s sacrifice.

There those who say that what you give comes back to you tenfold. Scientifically that is an oxymoron. When you give, the only applicable mathematics to you is subtraction and not addition. A multiplication dream is even more far-fetched.

The earlier you accept this concept the sooner you will begin to mature in things to do with savings and investments. When you sacrifice to give out money, or anything else, do a minus and flush it down the drain.

As an art however it feels good to hold on to the promise that the ‘investment’ will come back to you somehow a thousand fold. Well your thoughts are free to dream, in making utopia you should not be stopped.

Why Abraham’s case is a perfect example of sacrifice is because he was going to be left with completely nothing after sacrificing his only son. I wonder how many parents today would respond to such a request. Now that we are thinking about it, I wonder what role Abraham’s wife, Sarah had to play in all this!

so in short, a sacrifice in itself is not an investment. You cannot hang on a self-imposed promise expecting to benefit from something you did voluntarily. When you offer to do something, do it and move on, if you get a reward for it, well and good but if nothing comes your way, nobody will understand when you walk around in a long face.

Business Transaction

Indeed, our world today has become too transactionary. Everything is viewed as a business of give-and-take. We no longer offer service out of a good heart. A small boy will hardly offer to carry a bag for an elderly lady without expecting payment in return.

Should you be so unlucky to have a mechanical breakdown while in traffic, the first thing to come your way will be loud hooting and a hurl of insults from other motorists. The noise alone will be so deafening that the pain of a puncture will be like child paly.

“Uza gari ununue tyre, mbona ununue gari kama hauna pesa ya kubadilisha miguu mzee?”

“These people with dudu can be so annoying, hawa na drivers wa probox wako WhatsApp group moja.”

“Why should one drive a big car like this when he cannot afford petrol, now see the embarrassment he has to go through to go buy fuel from a petrol station on a boda boda.”

“This is not her car, this one must be from a sponsor, she must be calling him now to come and change the flat.”

I am sure you all have a line or two to take this piece to 20 pages and more. For as long as you have lived in Nairobi, you must have fallen victim to this hard life. Either that or you may be the reason for another person’s misery!

When all is said and done, the game of sacrifice is a zero-sum affair. Every dollar, sweat or minute that you spend getting it done is gone. You must first count it as lost and be contented with that unsettling situation or be pleasantly surprised to get a reward for your sweat. To be safe therefore, do not sit waiting for a reward!

If you are still with me, this statement should make sense to you, but if you did not have the stamina to sacrifice and read the entire text then this will just be another quote from an unknown famous person: “Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back,” Peter Beagle. Go forth now and make magic out of sacrifice!

Let me break it down even further. Everyday, there are thousands, even millions of people out there who give their best, work hard, toil the fields, carry heavy loads of luggage on their backs, and fight tooth and nail just to put food on the table.

There is a farmer who puts on a brave face walking around with dusty fingers and broken dreams after spending an entire season planting and tending to the crops. Year-in-year out the same process repeats itself but however when the sun goes down, it dawns with his hopes too for all the sweat and toil amounted to nothing. That unemployed youth out there is your employer's opportunity cost. Do you still want to call your 100K job a sacrifice?

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