“Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.”

When I read that our new prompt was to be “compromise” I, frankly, did not know where to begin. Compromise is hard to visualize as an image. It has different meanings and the word, itself, makes me a little uncomfortable. It is a concept that can have connotations that are positive or negative. I remember being taught the idea in elementary school and at a simple level, it represented something good. How could my sister and I resolve the question of who gets the last cookie? Why, by compromise, of course! We each want the whole cookie, but, clearly that can’t happen, so we compromise and break the cookie in half (quickly, before our brother even realizes there IS a cookie!) and though neither gets exactly what we wanted, half a cookie is better than nothing. Good lesson! That is, until we heard the story of King Solomon deciding for two mothers, each of whom claimed the same baby as theirs, which should be given the child. He proposed a compromise–take out a big sword and cut the baby in half. Whaaaat?! That was NOT a good compromise!

Still, in childhood, compromise, compromise, compromise–the idea was pushed at us constantly. I clearly remember a friend of my mother asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. “An artist,” I answered confidently. “Oh, you should study to be a teacher!” she declared. “You have to have a real job. You can be an artist on the weekends. That’s not a real job. Artists have to be able to make money with other jobs.” Internally, I bristled. I did not have any interest in being a teacher. But the message stayed with me. Lower your expectations. Don’t be unrealistic. Compromise. Amazing how much I absorbed that message. I became a teacher. I hated being a teacher. I was not good at it. I stuck it out for a couple years, but knew it wasn’t my destiny.

The past years have been an exercise, for me, in when to compromise and when not to. Do you bury your views, your dearly held principles and values inside and compromise and bend to the standards a certain community has set, or do you speak up? Do you place more value on compromise than morality? Do you “go along to get along?” For me the answer is no. I don’t think I can compromise what I believe to be right, to be moral, to be my authentic self. And I hope others feel that too. My piece is representative of a girl (because girls and women are most often forced to compromise themselves) who is filled with color and light and complexity who will never dim that light and compromise her colors to fit into a world of mediocrity. We ARE all we’ve got. So yes, compromise has its place, but we must understand that some compromises are harmful, some are useless, some are dishonest, and some are just stupid.

“You are all you’ve got”
16″ x 40″