bending, seeing grey and praising gentleness

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today. We were talking about the constant struggle existing to find balance between living in accordance with our convictions while remaining flexible to situations and "life". Sometimes, when we have something particular in mind we would like to be adhering to...opportunities magically show up that teach us a bit about flexibility and the truth of impermanence. I've been having an internal dialogue about all of that for quite a while now in my own life. Feeling, a lot of times, that I forgo certain values to better flow with the world around me. Or that, I don't properly surround myself with the support that I need but don't always accept. Sometimes, it all works out smoothly and I can walk away from that experience unscathed or scarred from the bending. Today, for example, I "bent" somewhat on one of my intentions that I happened to list the other day. Knowing that the words that I wrote are to be used as guiding principles, I gave myself the freedom of making an alternate decision about something after I realized how it actually would be helping a loved one and that I wouldn't be creating more harm in doing so. I was able to bend and not break...to see the situation from different angles and to make decisions based on various principles. And then, of course...there are other situations where you feel that the bending has actually hurt you. There might be some strained muscle from the constant pulling and pushing and you think "my! How nice it would be just to stick myself in the mud and not move!". Especially, I think, when we start coming into our own more...into our own values and beliefs and preference of things...this is when we are especially challenged with flexibility and bending. I have been thinking about how sometimes I let other people's opinions' echo a little too loudly in my mind. Or, I make up opinions for other people and I construct a story of how those very "opinions" feel restricting and limiting to me. And then...I start getting claustrophobia from the word "opinion" and I start to retreat from the whole issue altogether.

It's a very strange process. I was really happy to have it brought up in conversation this morning. I was able to look at different experiences and detach a bit from the opinion factor and the insecurity of other people's opinions. I seemed to reach this valuable place of acknowledging...if we could just always give each other space for being who we are in the MOMENT and allowing for our opinions to change or stay the same. If we could just see the grey. The balance might be a lot more accessible. Plus, I think we would be a lot more gentle along the way...don't you think?