My husband earned his President’s Club trip this year, an all-expenses-paid vacation to Hawaii. When he won this award two other times, when the kids were younger, I went with him. But this year, I chose not to, as a protest against the human rights atrocities and power abuses happening in that country.
It was one thing to make this decision before he left. It was another thing to hold onto my convictions and principles when he was actually there, in the humid air of Kauai, having a luxury experience that I chose not to be a part of. Jason felt strange being on his own, with no spouse (and he said he really missed me). He understood my reasons for not attending, and he was supportive, but it still cost both of us something.
When he sent pictures of the palm trees in the breeze, the Pacific Ocean, the nightly gifts, fruity tropical drinks, sea turtles, and the azure water of the winding lazy river, I felt the sacrifice I had made deep in my bones. I still believed in why I had refused to go, but I had to spend some time reckoning with what it costs us to make sacrifices.
I’m concerned that in our uber-convenient world—with overnight deliveries, food coming to our homes thirty minutes after we’ve ordered it, and social media marketing promising us that we can have anything we want, whenever we want it, with a minimum amount of inconvenience or fuss—we seem to have excised most forms of sacrifice from our lives.
I talked to my new counsellor about this. I said, “I’m proud of myself for making this hard decision not to go on the free trip. Jason didn’t have a choice. He works for a company based in the US, but I don’t. I have a choice, and I refuse to set foot on American soil until democracy and empathy are in place. But I still feel sad, for both of us, that I’m not there with him.”
She reminded me that of course I would have mixed feelings. That it’s healthy to miss him and to feel sad that I wasn’t there, but also to be proud that I took this moral stand. I can’t push others to take it with me, but I can take it for myself. All of these things can be true at once, and at the heart of these complicated feelings sits the price we pay for sacrifice.
I think I wanted it to be easier. In general, our internet-based lives have become so convenient that I tend to forget that a large part of the human experience involves pain and loss. Making a sacrifice is supposed to cost us something. It has a pinch of hurt baked right in. We find meaning where there’s a cost to be paid. When it’s free, and easy, and we have to give up nothing at all that matters to us, we aren’t sacrificing anything.
I do know that my small stand in not accepting a free trip to Hawaii is not going to move the needle politically. It’s not likely to do anything at all. But it matters to me. I needed to feel this pinch, this personal cost, to remember that many, many other people don’t have it easy at all. They are terrified, of being grabbed off the street, zip-tied, ripped away from their children, and imprisoned in horrendous conditions with no due process.
People are starving in Palestine and being bombed daily with no access to clean water or medicine. And in Ukraine, where their courageous refusal to bend the knee to a ruthless dictator has led to a war dragging on for years with an incredibly high price tag of sacrifice for so many Ukrainians.
There comes a time when each one of us has to draw a line that we simply cannot cross and live with ourselves. Lately, I’m disgusted by my own cowardice. I look to those who were captured on the Global Sumud Flotilla and I feel ashamed. I want to do more, to feel the pain of the sacrifice, to say NO MORE to this capitalist greed and mindless destruction of our planet and our resources and our compassion so billionaires can become richer and more powerful.
We all have to start where we are. To do what we can. To remember that sacrifice is supposed to cost us. Nothing worth achieving in life is free. It hurts, and these political systems that have become so evil and powerful and unfair will have to collapse and then be rebuilt, which will mean a lot of sacrifice for a lot of people. I’m practicing that now, holding it in my hands to see what it feels like.
I’m crying my tears when they come, and trying to keep my anguished heart open. I’m looking for more ways to speak up, to be involved, to believe that ordinary people have to be the ones to heal this mess and be brave enough to imagine a better future together. It will hurt, and it will cost us, and we must hold true to what we believe and who we are at our core. Otherwise the evil will win, and that’s not a situation I can countenance.