May 29, 2007

• Life, Compromises, and their Implications

  For some reason… beyond the usual background roar of voices inside my head… I have recently been contemplating the issue of “compromises,” and the impact they have on our lives.

  On some (fairly rational, I suppose) level, I see compromises as types of ”psychic transactions” we all seem to make, at various times in our lives. Actually, we probably compromise every day… agreeing to pay some sort of “psychic price” for some sort of “psychic benefit.” In a sense, it’s the “marketplace” of our inner lives, which subsequently becomes our outer realities.

  Are you with me so far, kids?

  Most compromises are very simple. I may not particularly want to have Mexican food for lunch, but you really do… and I am willing to pay the “price” of Mexican food (or “not-Thai food,” as the case might be) for the “benefit” of your company at lunch.

  Simple ’nuff.

  The line, however, gets blurrier when we get into some of the “major purchases” of our lives. Relationships, careers, where to live, values, spirituality, approaches to self-development…

  If you listen to most pundits (I do, although I don’t necessarily take their advice), there seems to be a popular belief that “you always have to compromise.” Which– to my ears, anyway– is essentially a different way of saying “You can never have exactly what you want.”

  But is that really true?

  How do we know that’s true? Do we even know that it’s true, or are we merely compromising ourselves on the altar of “majority opinion?” I am sure that it has escaped few people’s attention that the world frequently seems to know more about “what’s good for us” that we– ourselves– are credited with knowing…

  The more I look at it, the more it strikes me that we ultimately end up in some psychic version of “The Price is Right,” in which we are tasked with figuring out what our bottom line “price” is. And although many people are not sufficiently ”awake” or “present“ in their own lives to notice these choicepoints… this is often where “the rubber meets the road” in our existences, and where we may find ourselves on a slippery slope of some kind…. be it the slope of “popular opinion,” or one of our own making.

  So compromise really exists on two levels. We not only compromise on what we agree to want/have, but we also compromise on the “degree of perfection” we’re willing to accept.

  Or not.

  And people are very different, in their approaches. You may be a “43%-er” while I’m a “92%-er.” We would/might have a hard time seeing eye-to-eye, because what one person would call “good enough,” the other would see as “royally sucking,” even when their intentions are identical.

  Ultimately, I have little doubt that we compromise, but that the more important issue is really about what we compromise.

  My thoughts on compromise have been percolating somewhat more after I talked to my mother, yesterday. My mother is 85, and lives “retirement life” on a golf course in southern Spain (well, not ON the golf course, but you know…). We generally talk, once a week. We get along just fine, but no matter how much I try to communicate to her “who I am,” she really has no idea. And I don’t mean that in the stereotypical “parents don’t understand their kids” way; I mean it in an underlying “core values” sense. Specifically, she doesn’t grasp why things are “so important” to me.

  My mother– in many ways– IS “one big compromise.” By extension, that’s the model I went into the world with, when I left home. It was also a model I largely followed till my early 30′s (and beyond, as I continued to map my own fires of Hell, and gain self-awareness), and it was a model that did not serve me well, even though its “public face” came across as “open-mindedness.” Patches of this model remain, in places, like those hollows in the mountains where you suddenly find remnants of winter snow, in June.

  Anyway, my mother ”purchased” some very Big Ticket Items in her life. Most glaringly (whether it was conscious, or not), she was willing to pay the “price” of “little love, no passion,” for “money and status.”

  Twice.

  I’d be willing to buy the argument that “maybe she wanted it that way,” if it weren’t for the fact that she is quite aware of this fact, and during the occasional but rare ”intimate” conversations we manage to have (when gaps open in her swirling cloud of rationalizations) she grows quite wistful in contemplating ”All That Wasn’t.”

  Which brings me back to the question:

  “What price are you willing to pay, and for what?”

  Of course, it’s not always that cut and dry. As I observe humanity, and learn from my own suffering and the suffering of those I love and care about, I realize how much of the suffering stems not from the choices– the “price/benefit” transactions– themselves, but from the (dis)illusion we get locked into that our compromises are somehow “permanent” and “irreversible.”

  Life is forever changing. What is “True” today may not be “True” in a year; five years; 20 years from now. “Situational” compromises abound, but it seems to be a part of human nature to interpret the temporary as “permanent.” We enter so many situations with the mindset (inside) that “it’s just for now,” yet outwardly our lips move and speak words of “permanence.” My point being that some choice we make might be fine and dandy within a timeframe of a year or two, but not twenty or thirty.

  And yet… we live in a world that seems to have an (unhealthy?) love affair with “permanent.” Finite. Closed. End of story.

  It’s a shame really, because it strikes me that when we make choices against a backdrop of “permanence,” we often close ourselves off to the possibility of short-term “perfection.” But that’s a whole other blog…

  Having walked around in this neat little circle, I find myself with another question:

  “What is compromiseable, and what is not?”

  Where do we draw the line at “good enough?” Where are our “non-negotiables?” Do we choose to live our values, or do we merely pay lip service to them? Is there a similar– but different– “price” to pay for living our truth with less compromise? Are there things that cannot (or should not) be compromised? What (if anything) are we compromising by choosing to not even look at these issues?

  During the 20-odd years I have spent in/around the self-growth/spiritual awakening/self-realization/enlightenment business, the one constant seems to be the way people’s journeys tend to revolve around the discovery of ways in which they have “sold out;” ways in which they have either “fallen asleep to their core truth” or “prostituted their souls” in service of I’m-not-sure-what. I have certainly recognized myself in that pattern, many times.

  Life is weird.

  We admire people for “uncompromisingly sticking to their values” (when it suits us), while simultaneously condemning them as “inflexible and narrow-minded because they won’t compromise” (when it suits us).

  What is your bottom line?

  How much of yourself are you willing to “pay” to get some perceived “benefit?”

  Financially.
  Spiritually.
  Physically.
  With your values.
  In love.
  In friendship.

  Are you living your values, or compromising them?

   

  • 7:52 pm
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