Old Enough to Know Enough What Not to Compromise

On this typically wet and gray spring morning, I was feeling inflexible about kicking off my birthday week with a hike with my daughters. It was raining and chilly, so I opted for an easy walk that could be brief but beautiful and with some luck would incite appreciation. The last time I coaxed my children to said natural area, my teenager was in a backpack. I knew I had to promise not to herald the medicinal delights of wood violet, cleavers, fawn lily, rosy plectritis, trillium and camas in the pouring rain. And so the editing began.

In truth, I wanted to revisit these plants; I had been here a year prior with my fellow plant medicine student companions. I wanted to practice what I knew, point out the duck's foot and licorice fern and wax educated about mahonia skirting a meadow of camas lily, the abundant native food source once common throughout the Willamette Valley on grassy plateaus. But my daughters were out with me in the rain grudgingly, and I knew it was in my best interest to keep quiet about the glorious spring drizzle and color and bloom. Editing, with reasonable cause.

There's something about editing one's intuitive self that reaches a very tender place of identity. The diplomat in me doesn't want to employ this filter at all. The realist in me lacks patience with those who can't handle people for who they are. The optimist in me wants to be myself, at all times. The mother in me knows  it's my job to press boundaries of exposure and experience....as well as sacrifice when necessary. Some editing falls within reason. Like today: I could relinquish sharing my knowledge of this special place to my daughters. I could edit myself for the sake of a pleasant loop through the wet open meadow and oak savannah in the rain. I could compromise.

And then there's the other kind of editing. The editing that compromises scruples and natural inclinations and thoughts. Invigorating and attractive people can inspire this kind of editing of self.  Recently I caught myself in one of these compromises too. I found myself wondering if I was playing by the right rules of the game, even though I didn't think I was playing a game. Of course I did this with enough consciousness to believe I was getting something valuable in return. And I was. Until I wasn't. I was editing for leverage.

So what's the difference? It was pretty clear by the way I felt in each of the above situations there is an important difference. Editing for pleasantry = permissible. Editing for leverage = unsustainable. Editing myself for leverage or compromise revealed inflexible manners and rigidly reduced possibility. Inflexibility and rigidity are a short jaunt to bad. Tolerating bad = compromise. Which led me to wonder, how much compromise is too much?
In the words of my favorite fella, "We're too old to care for people with bad manners."  I couldn't agree more. Compromising manners and simple acts of respect are too much editing. I won't edit myself for the sake of an adult's inflexibility or comfort. The realist and the optimist in me, they know enough to work it together.