Are you a fence-sitter or do you take a stand?

For a long time I would never take part in debates, simply because i could always see both sides of the story, so I was never fully convinced about any argument. I’d start thinking seriously about one line of thought and then when I started thinking about the flip side I’d see their point too. For a long time I kept quite simply because I was not convinced about either sides. The dictionary describes the word fence-sitter as One who takes a position of neutrality or indecision in a controversial matter. That’s who I was; a person who doesn’t take any sides, avoids confrontations, doesn’t like to ruffle any feathers.
My fence sitting habit didn’t stop at only debates, it carried on to a lot of things in my life including that was very important to me, my friendships. When 2 of my friends would have an argument or have a fall-out, I would probably be the one who knew both sides of the story, and as I got both their points I would do nothing about it. I would sit on the fence and wait it out; it really irritated most of friends. At times I would feel that they are both right in sticking to their guns, and even though I felt that at times one of them was wrong, I would still do nothing about it.
Where did my fence sitting come from, did it come from the fact that I wanted to be accepted and liked by all, the nice guy syndrome. I even felt that this was ok for a while, till I realized that I didn’t have any opinions of my own, I started losing convictions in all that I believed, at times I couldn’t even take a decision because of my fence sitting.
But when you start loosing the respect of your peers and friends, that’s when it starts hurting, my own friends refused to take my opinions, because they felt that I had none and that’s when things started changing.
These things probably happen overnight or they don’t happen at all, and it did, it was like a switch that was turned on, it happened when the girl I was dating made a very casual remark which basically meant that since I didn’t have any opinions of my own I was spineless and that’s why I could not be relied on, that’s when I realized something; sometimes it’s ok to be a moderate, be tolerant about other people’s view, but one should definitely have a point of view, it might be very drastic, it might be different from the majority but it’s your point of view, you can still hold your own point of view and yet respect the others’.