The Highest Sacrifice

“We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.” –James A. Garfield, May 30, 1868, Arlington National Cemetery

“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received – only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.” -Saint Francis of Assisi

“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. -Thomas Merton

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong. -William Shakespeare, “Sonnett 88”

On this Memorial Day, as we celebrate and honor all the men and women who made the highest sacrifice, I thought to share this excellent post from The Daily Stoic…

Courage often has clear rewards. An entrepreneur takes a risk because there is hope for a payoff—to get something others are afraid to reach for. Someone decides to be unique or different because they realize that to live any other way is to live unhappily with a lie.

But there is something beyond this kind of ordinary courage that defines self-interest. Sacrificing oneself? Sacrificing everything for something? “Human folly,” a historian once said, “is easier to explain than human valor.”

On Memorial Day, it is worth reflecting on this very beautiful and almost baffling bit of human greatness. And it is indeed, utterly inexplicable to some. A particularly craven man once stood in a military cemetery and looked out over the graves of those who had been lost in the nation’s wars over the centuries. “I don’t get it,” he said derisively. “What was in it for them?”

When most people ask that question, it’s out of a kind of humility and awe, a desire to understand an incredible phenomenon. But for the transactional, the cowardly, or the selfish, it just doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone give up their life for someone else? What kind of deal is that?

There’s courage and then there is heroism, the highest form of courage. The kind embodied in those who are willing to give, perhaps give everything, for someone else. Cato, who chose death over kneeling to Caesar (his daughter Porcia who followed suit by swallowing hot coals). Thrasea and Helvidius who died in resistance to Nero. Rutilius Rufus who gave him his home and his livelihood rather than be sucked into Rome’s culture of corruption. Stockdale, who perhaps thinking of Cato, tried to kill himself to end the torture of his fellow POWs.

There was nothing in it for these men and women, just as there was nothing in it for the soldiers who perished in uniform for their country. But they did it because they knew it wasn’t about them. It was about the person next to them, it was about the people back home, it was about the ideals to which they had sworn to uphold and protect.

True heroism shames us. Humbles us. It moves us beyond reason—because it came from something beyond reason. It’s self-evident why the survival rate of those who manage to transcend self-preservation to reach this greatness is not high. But then again, that is the beauty of it—in some cases, they died so that we could live. We fail them and we fail ourselves if we don’t wrestle with the meaning of this sacrifice.

P.S. – The picture above is from the film “The Best Years Of Our Lives.” I wrote about it in my April 2025 Favorites and it’s #2 on the Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures “Best Movies to Watch in Honor of Memorial Day“.

P.P.S. – This NYT article on the history of Memorial Day. As well as this PBS site.