Compromise or rebel?

Your life has been a long sequence of compromises. You’d like to follow your values, but your friends, family, society do the same as well. These values can be wildly different, even contradictory and somehow it works out to become a compromise for most people, most of the time. Very few people, very rarely, get everything exactly the way they want it. You learned to live with it because you had to.

But, every now and then you become rebellious. “I am not giving an inch from this (whatever this is) because it’s just too important to me”. So you stick to your gun and suffer the consequences. You may lose a friend, a spouse, a job, maybe even your freedom or your life. On rare occasions you may have your way without losing too much. Then back to the never ending sequence of compromises.

As you are getting older, you feel that you are running out of time and you become more and more rebellious. You decide that you have a core set of values that you won’t compromise on because these values are the essence of what and who you are and your own self-respect is at stake. That’s when you realize that you became a cantankerous old curmudgeon, at risk of becoming a bona fide misanthrope.

So what’s in the balance? In one pan of the scale you have your self-esteem. In the other it may be the weight of loneliness. Nobody likes those who are unwilling to compromise. After all, who the hell are they to know for sure what’s right? The answer: you are the only one who can tell, at least for yourself.