Don’t Make Lemonade, Come Over to the Bright Side!

Bitter, sour and insufferable lemons turned into a favorable cocktail of lemonade.

No catchphrase on Earth best captures the notion of turning life’s burdens, pains, frustrations and stresses – call them unpleasantries, into something bearing some ‘positive energy,’ than this:

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

If only lemonade grew on trees in the place of lemons, there would be no such thing as bitter.

Life would be a pleasant rollercoaster of unending smiles, laughter and bright sunny days.

Our taste buds would eventually drive bitterness to extinction.

Reinvent the lemon?!

Perhaps we’d be better of modifying lemon trees to yield lemonade, so lemons and their troubles would never have a place.

But the truth is that as long as we’re living in a broken world, there’ll always be a tree dropping lemons and trying to modify wouldn’t help much.

Trees (figuratively) could be friends, family, loved ones, school, work or pretty much anything around us.

Even ourselves; sometimes we’ll be the ones squeezing lemon juice down into our guts:

Worry too much, and there’ll be no stopping the lemon juice when it starts to trickle with anxiety or depression.

Gobble up on junk food, and lemon squeezy will be smiling, ready to slap with fat and extra weight. Trust a friend, and in turn they’ll squeeze lemons down your throat.

Can’t do away with lemons

Well, unpleasantries in life are imperative; they are bound to hit at some point, from within or around us.

Just as certain as a lemon won’t pack up lemonade in its juicy sacs, life on Earth won’t always tickle us with pleasure. No, it will be certain to keep dropping unpleasantries.

Not to dampen the good moods, but that’s life’s drill, and we can’t change it. Our best hope lies in how we respond.

That’s the reason it seems so necessary that we keep on making lemonade, cos we have to respond, fight back and turn that hostile energy into something good.

Retaliation upon provocation

But there is something inherently wrong with lemonade-ing through life’s unpleasantries.

The problem is embedded in its MO (modus operandi), which is retaliation upon provocation.

You can’t make lemonade without lemons, right? Yea, there’s gotta be some anger, disappointment, heartache; some unpleasantry to poke and puff you up to a point you have to retaliate.

Fighters on call

Retaliation awakens the fighters in us; fighters on a defensive assault. Such fighters do not spare any effort, not when they have just been attacked. They get angrier, vicious and bloodier.

As life’s unpleasantries provoke, battles are fought, victories won and losses suffered in defeat.

Eventually, the unpleasantries start to pour down in torrents (they always do at some point), provoking an unending spree of battles. Now the fighter is always on call, always in battle gear.

But we’re beings given to exhaustion. You cannot just expend your all your energies and ammunition anyhow. There’s a time to fight, and a time to rejuvenate.

But, many fighters out here – all they do is fight, keep fighting until their energy is expended.

In the long run, some end up fatigued, others become hardened, numb and cold while others might just survive.

Worn out and hardened fighters

Endless battles are churning out fatigued fighters, who despite being worn out, show up for battle, trying to sweeten their lemons.

To what end? Depression, mental instability, peacelessness and everything that comes with?

Others cope by anything strong enough to take out the lemons. That’s a very long inventory of habits and addictions.

Lemonade’s a sucking bug

So, again, what’s wrong with lemonade-ing?

It sucks on your energy reserves. Just like a bug, it will relentlessly gorge itself on your strength, slow and steady, until there is hardly enough left.

If only the bug was kind enough to pump back what it sucked…yea but then there’d be no bug, cos it would wilfully starve itself. No bug does that. Self preservation, remember? It’s either you or the bug.

There’s gotta be an alternative school of thought, one that is not hinged on ephemeral, adrenaline-charged bouts of retaliation, but emphasizes on a lifelong polishing of persons, turning wobbly fighters to battle heroes.

Now what’s better than making lemonade?

What’s better than expending strength 24/7?

What’s better than waiting to get punched in the face to strike back?

It’s gratitude.

Gratitude – on the bright side

Retaliation won’t give you the chance to grow your capability to handle tough stuff, it’ll keep closing you in.

With retaliation, every problem life throws at us is seen as an adversary to be fought, thus the fighter narrative.

There is hardly room for gratitude; appreciation for the positive things that appear so faint in adversity.

Gratitude is the MO on the bright side of life. It opens our perception to  see positive energies in the worst.

When unpleasantries come, we respond by finding (not creating) positivity in adversity; by being appreciative of who we are and what we possess.

Scientifically, gratitude has been proven to result in better moods, stronger relationships, stronger immunity and lesser pain.

It is not the sucking bug that retaliation is. As we practise it, gratitude equips, builds up more resilience for the next challenges life might present.

But, to stay in the bright side is difficult. We may often find ourselves switching to the grey side or the murky side once in a while. That’s who we are.

But as Christina Costa says, the more we activate gratitude circuits in our brains, the less effort it takes to stimulate next time.

Choose gratitude, and stay on the bright side of life. Adios!

This article was inspired in part by “Kiss your brain,” an inspiring story of gratitude as an alternative to the fighter narrative, by Christina Costa on Ted Talks. Check it out on the hyperlink.