"When life hands you lemons, make lemonade" has always struck me as an odd saying. If all life hands you are lemons, all you can make is lemon juice. Lemonade needs sugar and water in addition to the aforementioned lemons! People always throw out this saying when they see others being down, or going through a hard time. While I agree with the sentiment, the saying itself will always be wrong. When life is lowballing shit at you, you can't turn that into lemonade. You can't turn it into anything other than manure.
What's manure do? It helps things grow. So when life is constantly getting you down, when nothing is going right, we take that and we grow from it. There's no point in pretending that we can take shitty situations and make them something delightful and refreshing (lemonade), instead we plant ourselves down and grow through it (manure) until we become stronger than we were before. Plus, too much lemonade would probably cause diabetes.
I mention this because I'm growing tired of people saying to make the best out of certain situations. You can't do that with some things, and understanding that, accepting that, is part of growing wise. There are some bad situations that we can make the best of (being sick, suspensions, getting fired), but there are some that will always be shitty (death, war, American politics), and we have to accept that. It's not being pessimistic, or negative, it is simply coming to understand that life doesn't have to conform to our ideals.
I try to remain optimistic at all times, I like to believe in the inherent goodness of mankind, but I know that isn't how life really works. I have come to accept that there are certain events and happenings that don't have a good side. Not every cloud does have a silver lining, some are just full of thunder and lightning and rain. But that's okay. The rain helps the crops grow, just as the bad times in life help us grow.
So the next time someone tells you to make lemonade out of the lemon of your life, hand them a bottle of lemon juice and tell them to drink up. And then give the poor bugger some real lemonade, they've obviously been making it wrong their whole life.
What's manure do? It helps things grow. So when life is constantly getting you down, when nothing is going right, we take that and we grow from it. There's no point in pretending that we can take shitty situations and make them something delightful and refreshing (lemonade), instead we plant ourselves down and grow through it (manure) until we become stronger than we were before. Plus, too much lemonade would probably cause diabetes.
I mention this because I'm growing tired of people saying to make the best out of certain situations. You can't do that with some things, and understanding that, accepting that, is part of growing wise. There are some bad situations that we can make the best of (being sick, suspensions, getting fired), but there are some that will always be shitty (death, war, American politics), and we have to accept that. It's not being pessimistic, or negative, it is simply coming to understand that life doesn't have to conform to our ideals.
I try to remain optimistic at all times, I like to believe in the inherent goodness of mankind, but I know that isn't how life really works. I have come to accept that there are certain events and happenings that don't have a good side. Not every cloud does have a silver lining, some are just full of thunder and lightning and rain. But that's okay. The rain helps the crops grow, just as the bad times in life help us grow.
So the next time someone tells you to make lemonade out of the lemon of your life, hand them a bottle of lemon juice and tell them to drink up. And then give the poor bugger some real lemonade, they've obviously been making it wrong their whole life.
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