Today is November 11th, Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day in the U.S.A.). This is the day we remember the sacrifices made by fellow citizens in order to preserve our cherished constitutionalized freedoms.
We do not use this time to glorify war; instead, we pause to reflect on the implications of it. We recollect the hardships endured by our fathers and mothers, grandparents, brothers and sisters. We mourn those who suffered and those who lost their lives.
Is the concept of sacrifice a vanishing one? For many of us who live in North America, we have been insulated from the direct hits of war. Yes, our countries have active armed forces and all of us know of someone who has served in some way, either abroad or at home.
But now the word "sacrifice" means different things to different people. I asked several people this morning in the line-up at my local coffee shop what the word means to them, and got various responses, ranging from, "Not having my morning coffee!", to "Tightening my spending". Not one person correlated sacrifice to the importance of November 11th. How sad that over the decades since the Great War the word "sacrifice" has become trivialized and its impact minimized.
We are just so lucky, and we don't know it. We really don't have a clue. Let us all pause to reflect today at 11 a.m. what sacrifice truly means.
