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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 2297796" data-attributes="member: 158">What he's sacrificing is his comfort, his safety, and his lack of responsibility. Would you personally get beat up on the behalf of somebody you don't know? It's hard enough in the present day to get people to honor a pledge drive, much less get involved physically.Gandalf COULD have not gotten involved, hell, even moved to the Western lands with the elves, or done a number of evasive things that bought him time at the expense of Gondor, the Shire, the Rohirrim, etc. He didn't owe a darned thing to the Hobbits - except his friendship. He knew something bad was about to happen, so he acted on it. Just as Han Solo in Star Wars sacrificed his comfort for the friendship of a witchy princess and a scruffy farmboy, he couldn't know that his actions would culminate in galaxy-wide political freedom.Just because you will come out better in the end doesn't mean it's no sacrifice to get involved. Unless someone has a refutation, I don't think Gandalf knew he'd come out of it better than he went in. Neither did Han, or our Generic Hero.For my understanding, risk IS sacrifice, it implies acting above the call for another's sake.</blockquote>