Sacrifice

One can come to understand what is important in someone’s life by observing the sacrifices that they make. This is similar to the act of observing how one spends one’s time and one’s money but it is looking from the reverse perspective. We can look at the stellar successes of many people and cannot but feel envy (to some degree, not necessarily sinful) for that success. But we must understand that someone made great sacrifices, some of them simply wrong to make, in order to gain that success. Whether they be moral sacrifices, financial sacrifices, or otherwise, sacrifices were made.

The question is, what sacrifices should we be willing to make to achieve our goals? Do we sacrifice our conscience? Do we sacrifice the other-centeredness to which we, as Christians, are called? Do we neglect the health of our souls? Do we neglect or ignore eternity to make gains in the here and now? Do we think that we can squeak by on almost borderline morality?
One can speak of narcissism here or Machiavellianism or just simply selfishness, but these are really all just fancy terms for self-centeredness. It is so important and so valuable, I believe to try to always approach a thought, an idea, a situation, anything really, into which we make contact, from an objective, non-emotional perspective, at least to start.  If we can step away from the "fun", "fulfillment:" or "satisfaction" that great wealth can bring, and look at the price paid for achieving that level of financial gain, we will usually see that the price paid was too high.  Too many sacrifices were made, usually at someone else's expense. It is when we can think of success in this framework that we will begin to have a balanced view of the entire picture.
Sure it may be temporally satisfying, but at what price?