Discipline versus Sacrifice
One of the biggest lies out there is that sacrifice is noble and that it’s 100% required to have anything worthwhile. I disagree with this completely and believe that people are generally confusing discipline with sacrifice and using them interchangeably when they shouldn’t.
Sacrifice and discipline are two extremely distinct and separate words and concepts.
Sacrifice is defined as ‘the destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else.’ Robert Bly writes in his notable book, Iron John, that “our sacrifices have become unconscious, regressive, pointless, indiscriminate, self-destructive, and massive.” He asserts that this is because people in the west have lost connection to ritual, community, and the wildness that lives within them. This results in western-folk living under indoctrinated paradigms of “right or wrong” versus what’s ‘true or untrue to us.’
People sacrifice themselves day in and day out because they believe this is the only way, yet unconciously they create deep-seated resentment that erodes the joy from their lives. They don’t see it until it’s far too late because many times it’s disguised as happiness. For example a mom is “happy to give up all her exercise rituals because her child needs her.” What her child actually needs is to see her loving and honoring herself. When she doesn’t, the child learns that the “right thing to do” is to give up on herself.
Discipline is the correct word to use when referring to the desire to achieve something. Discipline is defined as ‘to train or develop by instruction, order, and repeated action to acquire mastery in a knowledge area or skill.’ With discipline, people surrender the things that are not actually very important to them, such that they can make space to work on mastering the area or skill that is of utmost importance.
While discipline brings you towards your higher self, sacrifice actually takes you away from your higher self. While discipline denotes growth, evolution, and ritual practice headed in the direction of a goal or objective, sacrifice implies giving up the most important and valuable elements a person has of themselves.
Sacrifice breeds resentment; resentment so sneaky, so undetectable, that it looks like happiness from afar.
People think the more they give up the things they love or are good for them, the more they’ll get appreciated. In theory, it seems like that should make sense, but in practice - it doesn’t actually work. When you give up something core to your being, then you automatically are looking for something else to fill that empty space. This is extremely common in the parent/child dynamic. The parent sacrifices for their kids and they think the kid should love them for their sacrifice. They don’t say it out loud, but through their actions that is what they communicate as the child grows.
One of the best quotes to represent this dynamic is from famed psychologist Carl Jung:,
“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the un-lived life of the parent,”
Here are two examples that illustrate this (one big and one smaller);
The big one that I see time and time again is when parents stay in a loveless, lukewarm, or even abusive relationship while subconsciously using their kids to try and fill the loveless void. They create a co-dependent or overly obsessive relationship with them by over-giving, over-extending, and over-engaging. Though the kid knows the parent loves them completely, the way in which they give to their kids is an effect of the void of (romantic) love they feel. The kid feels this deeply and it causes resentment because unconsciously the parent makes the kid feel responsible for this.
Remember, a huge amount of communication is non-verbal, kids can feel the truth even if it’s unsaid. So no matter what the kid does or doesn’t do, it’s never good enough for the parent because nothing can fill that void. The parent usually doesn’t understand this because it’s happening subconsciously so when the kid rejects the giving/obsessing by not succumbing to the parent’s desires or whims, the parent uses guilt and shame tactics. It sounds like, “After all that I’ve done for you…etc.” They think they are angry at the child, but the true emotion beneath it is just sadness because they sacrificed the opportunity for true love in a different relationship.
This is the basis for the misunderstanding and tension for a parent/child dynamic that’s based on self-sacrifice, it doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s a long game of push and pull until someone does to inner work to figure this out and heal it.
On a smaller scale, this happens over and over again with health and fitness or with travel. A parent will sacrifice their health and fitness during the early years of a child’s upbringing like the “happy mom” I mentioned above, but at the end of the day happy mom is only happy when the child does exactly what she thinks they should do. The resentment is there until the parent becomes aware to this dynamic. This also happens if a parent sacrificed a deep desire to travel, for example, and hasn’t remedied that for themselves. They over-index on the meaning behind the child’s actions and take personally everything they do, say, or think. If it doesn’t help the parent fill that void then it’s criticized or demeaned. This is resentment and it’s caused by the un-lived life of the parent.
My deep desire is for parents to be truly happy with themselves and then accepting of their children’s choices. We can get there when we start to reject this idea of sacrifice as a means for success or happiness, because in my humble opinion it does the exact opposite.