It was just another, ordinary day in Iraq, when a young child, no older than ten, came frantically running at my cousin with a ticking bomb tucked under his shirt. Although my cousin did not want to harm the child, he had no choice but to sacrifice the kid’s life so no other soldiers would be hurt. Haunting nightmares and frustration is what my cousin Nick goes through on a daily basis after this horrible experience. Reliving this experience with him makes him incredibly emotional because he didn’t want to hurt a kid, especially when he had a newborn waiting for him when he got home.

Sacrifice, bravery, and strength are some of the many things it takes to live through and after these experiences. Soldiers sacrifice their own lives to help millions of people that they don’t know and may never know. Bravery to enlist and dedicate your life to people you don’t even know and thinking about them before yourself. Strength to be able to fight and persevere through whatever gets thrown at you and never giving up, even when things get hard.

Everyone thinks of patriotism differently. The way they view patriotism could be from how they grew up when they were children and what their parents believed in. Patriotism could simply be the support and love of the country you live in or it could be the dedication to improve and protect it, even at the cost of your own life or others. To put it simply, patriotism is the love and passion for one’s country.