I Appreciate The Best But I'm Settling For Less

What's good enough and what's a dealbreaker? When we learn about something that shakes us to our core, how do we know if it's something we should walk away from because it's indicative of a pattern or if it's something we can adapt to?

I think a large part of that answer lies in how well we know ourselves and how secure we are in being who we are without needing something external to help validate us. Of course we all play roles in life and often we do because we feel we must in order to be accepted, respected, appreciated or loved. But like an actor who typecasts himself by only taking on the roles he's sure he can do, we can get so comfortable in our own performances that we forget what it means to draw lines in the sand and use the words, "No, this isn't acceptable to me and I won't live with that because I respect myself too much."

Yet…..that’s the problem, isn’t it? Self-esteem gets sucked out the airplane window. When people look to other people to tell them who they are, how can they truly understand the meaning of self-respect? They accept what other people do to them or say to them because somehow they think that it's their due and they tune out the only judgment that matters -- their own. I’m not speaking of the daily injustices we all face. I am speaking instead of the people that, at pivotal moments, turn down the volume on the internal clamour of pain or anger that rises in response to an attack on their self-respect from a source that refuses to consider compromise. Their fear of aloneness overwhelms their need for self preservation.

At that moment they have two choices; sell their self-respect to the offender or step back and refuse to allow themselves to be misrepresented or mishandled. The latter may cost them a friendship or a business deal or a relationship. The former? It may not seem like it’s such a bad trade. They manage to maintain the status quo and they don’t seem to “lose” anything at all. But ah, what they are really doing is the slow leak. It’s like a pinhole in the artery that nobody can detect on the ultrasound. It’s essentially whoring themselves out in fits and spurts, giving a little here and a little there until there’s nothing left. The former is much more tragic. It might very well cost them themselves.

((Song: "Looking For The Next Best Thing" by Warren Zevon. Lyrics here:
http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/warren_zevon/looking_for_the_next_best_thing.html))