Sacrifice....Does the concept exist?

It has been quite a while that I have been thinking and thinking hard about sacrifice. The word has been extolled to a near god like status and all the greatness attributed to any individual ever, has always invariably arisen from his "sacrifice". What I am going to write is however a little audacious and would love some comments, but all I request is just look into the details because there in lied the explanation of the concept.

What is sacrifice? the dictionary meaning may be likened to something as giving up for someone… but what important is the motive. Picture this…a very trivial case. You have been given a thousand rupees and you are out to buy yourself say the collection of music cd's which you always wanted. Also you come to know that your dad has expressed his wish for a new shirt, the wish being unknown for you, the cash component however is fixed. So what do you do? You go and buy dad that shirt and deny yourself the cd's…and somewhere along the line you know you have "sacrificed"…but look closely…have you? Getting the cd's would have given you some pleasure and at the same time by that your denial to your fathers wish of a shirt would have given him some pain. His pain, pains you in return, so you do a choice analysis between the pleasure of your cd's and the pain incurred from denial of the shirt and realize that the pains more to escape from that you buy him the shirt.

Analyze closely and honestly every time we have inwardly stood on the high pedestal and inwardly consoled ourselves about a sacrifice we have always and always tried to escape pain. Its rooted in the human tendency. But does that mean that sacrifice does not exist? What is true sacrifice… i guess true sacrifice is not what you can give but how much can be taken away from you. The mistake is sacrifice is not something voluntary but involuntary. The extent of your sacrifice is your willingness to part with things which you cannot part with and the resulting cessation of pain (dads pain of not getting the shirt for eg) has to be less than your joy of getting the thing. Even then if you see… sacrifice is the highest form of selfishness. When Buddha offered his head instead of a goat to be slaughtered his pain at seeing the goat die was far greater than his joy of survival. Nay selfish he was that he couldn't bear to see the goat slaughtered and offered himself.

The point here is that I have realized that no matter how much we think we have sacrificed, no matter what we have done for our family or for the country, it is all done for cessation of our pain which we cannot bear. There for next time I think I have done a sacrifice, I guess i will remember that the glory is not to me nor to anyone…its my shoulder and it's the wheel of this world and I have just chosen to push a little more...