Please Value Compromise

Aug 17, 2010, 12.00am IST
SANJAY DEV.

If you can't go that extra mile, meet someone halfway. Value compromise, but don't compromise your values. Life is not a smooth journey. It should not be. It is marked by ups and downs. People and situations move in and out of life. Some are easy to handle while others are difficult to deal with. It is the difficult ones that always come to us to test out abilities of how smoothly we manage to cope with them, with least resistance and friction offered in the effort.

We may not always get what we want. Does that mean we should not seek to get what we want? Or rue over the fact that what we set out to achieve is different from what we actually did?

Disagreement occurs, not so much for want of agreement as to the lack of our desire to agree. Our entrenched disinclination disposes us not to agree to something or with someone that is half as good. When we say half as good, we presuppose the half as bad already. This conflict between half as good and half as bad holds us back to arrive at a solution with regard to people and situations that are not past resolve in themselves.

When faced with people and situations caught in the spatio-temporal warp, different from our own, we fail to see them in objective light. Our subjective thinking gets the better of us. As a result what's obvious to others is not so to us.

The solution to resolve a deadlocked situation or parties involved in it exists outside this warp. But for that to happen, people need to cede their stance.

This ceding of position is not acceptance of defeat, or meek surrender. It is not something to be ashamed of or to feel conscious-stricken about. Rather it is the brave attempt at surmounting the inflated sense of ego that comes in the way of us arriving at an agreement. It is a conscious choice.

Adoption of such a way requires us to recognise others' point of view. We can start looking for merit in others' case only when we presume an element of demerit in ours. For truth is never absolute. We mistakenly chase the shadow and miss the image.

Compromise is intrinsic to nature's scheme of things to avoid resistance. When a fierce wind threatens to blow away and uproot all that comes in its path, even the mighty tree, otherwise firmly standing, begins to sway and bends and bows. The fury of wind doesn't last, but the submissive bending of tree manages to see it through the rough patch. A blade of grass flattens itself against the swift current of water only to pop up its head when the current slackens. Nature uses this defence mechanism for survival. It also teaches us to live in harmony with one another and at peace with ourselves.

Nature provides us with the option of compromise as an effective means to achieve harmony and peace in times of personal conflict and emotional turmoil and interpersonal clash and collective wars. We only need to wake up to the idea and bring it into play to attain peace within and outside.

It is certainly not a big price, rather a welcome value addition in the objective evaluation of compromise. What are we waiting for?