"Sacrifices"
Friday, 18 April 2014 21:48![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elusivekAnd I remembered what I wanted to write about! Previous post promptly deleted to avoid embarrassment!
And it is about sacrifices.
According to Merriam-Webster, one of the meanings of "Sacrifice" is:
So... meaning-wise, I shouldn't really complain about what a friend is doing. But, well, the whole thing just doesn't sit right with me.
I was having lunch with a friend the other day, and she was telling me about her trip to Hong Kong. She went to see the service of a priest that had passed away. As it was held in a rahter remote part of Hong Kong, she had to stay overnight there.
So our mindless conversation went on and eventually, she said something about her cats not eating for a day.
If you know me in real life, you'll know that I am generally a very calm person. Not easily agitated, not easily frightened (I scare the "ghosts" back in haunted house rides/theme parks).
Except when it comes to how you treat animals.
I challenged her about it, leaving her cats without food for a whole day, and she goes, "it's not exactly a whole day, if you count the hours, it's like some 18 hours or so only". As that did not placate me, I continued to challenge her. She lives with her sister and her mom, so she could have asked them for help with feeding. I know her family has some pretty weird dynamics, but I would think for feeding the cats, they would all cooperate.
She says that she read somewhere that even in zoos the animals are not fed every single day, as the animals' livers have to rest too.
It came to a point where I decided not to pursue this path of conversation; I believe I was close to just strangling her.
Somehow eventually, the conversation turned to eating habits.
She said she has decided to give up Chocolates. I ask her why, and she says "for her cats' health."
That is a very foreign concept to me, so I asked her, for this type of "sacrificing for somebody else's health", wouldn't it be more practical to sacrifice something that would actually be conducive to keeping this somebody's health?"
She replies me, "We better not talk about this as you do not understand."
Indeed, I do not understand. My Mom seems to have understood it. She said "a sacrifice is a sacrifice. People make sacrifices for something else."
Right, I understand the concept of it. You sacrifice one thing in order to make another thing happen. But there needs to be some sort of correlation, I think. To make sacrifices with no correlation whatsoever is like making a deal with a higher power for something else to happen. That's just BS to me.
"Sacrificing chocolate for the good health of cats" makes no sense when you don't even take good care of your cats, no matter how much you love chocolate, and how much pain giving up chocolate gives you. I would say a good trade would be to "Sacrificing my trip to Hong Kong (which is something you really want to do) in order to have time to take care of my cats" has a more direct correlation in keeping your cats healthy.
Still slightly irritated with the friend that thinks like this, but well, it's not my place to judge, nor to tell her what is right and what is wrong. She knows I was rather annoyed the way she treated her cats, and how she decides to respond or change, is entirely up to her.
What are your thoughts on "making sacrifices"?
And it is about sacrifices.
According to Merriam-Webster, one of the meanings of "Sacrifice" is:
the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone [Link]
So... meaning-wise, I shouldn't really complain about what a friend is doing. But, well, the whole thing just doesn't sit right with me.
I was having lunch with a friend the other day, and she was telling me about her trip to Hong Kong. She went to see the service of a priest that had passed away. As it was held in a rahter remote part of Hong Kong, she had to stay overnight there.
So our mindless conversation went on and eventually, she said something about her cats not eating for a day.
If you know me in real life, you'll know that I am generally a very calm person. Not easily agitated, not easily frightened (I scare the "ghosts" back in haunted house rides/theme parks).
Except when it comes to how you treat animals.
I challenged her about it, leaving her cats without food for a whole day, and she goes, "it's not exactly a whole day, if you count the hours, it's like some 18 hours or so only". As that did not placate me, I continued to challenge her. She lives with her sister and her mom, so she could have asked them for help with feeding. I know her family has some pretty weird dynamics, but I would think for feeding the cats, they would all cooperate.
She says that she read somewhere that even in zoos the animals are not fed every single day, as the animals' livers have to rest too.
It came to a point where I decided not to pursue this path of conversation; I believe I was close to just strangling her.
Somehow eventually, the conversation turned to eating habits.
She said she has decided to give up Chocolates. I ask her why, and she says "for her cats' health."
That is a very foreign concept to me, so I asked her, for this type of "sacrificing for somebody else's health", wouldn't it be more practical to sacrifice something that would actually be conducive to keeping this somebody's health?"
She replies me, "We better not talk about this as you do not understand."
Indeed, I do not understand. My Mom seems to have understood it. She said "a sacrifice is a sacrifice. People make sacrifices for something else."
Right, I understand the concept of it. You sacrifice one thing in order to make another thing happen. But there needs to be some sort of correlation, I think. To make sacrifices with no correlation whatsoever is like making a deal with a higher power for something else to happen. That's just BS to me.
"Sacrificing chocolate for the good health of cats" makes no sense when you don't even take good care of your cats, no matter how much you love chocolate, and how much pain giving up chocolate gives you. I would say a good trade would be to "Sacrificing my trip to Hong Kong (which is something you really want to do) in order to have time to take care of my cats" has a more direct correlation in keeping your cats healthy.
Still slightly irritated with the friend that thinks like this, but well, it's not my place to judge, nor to tell her what is right and what is wrong. She knows I was rather annoyed the way she treated her cats, and how she decides to respond or change, is entirely up to her.
What are your thoughts on "making sacrifices"?
