30 Day Blogging Detritus, March Edition

day 21- lemons from lemonade

Write about good things that can come out of a bad situation. If you have an example from personal experience, please share!

I used to have these novelty napkins with a 50's guy pouring lemonade from a pitcher and the caption read "when life hands you lemons- if you don't have sugar and water, your lemonade's gonna suck"

It's not only hilarious, but I've also found it to be kinda true. There are plenty of things that have happened to me personally when good stuff came out of a bad situation. I didn't always recognize it at the time, or sometimes even later until someone else pointed it out to me. I don't think it's an A to B process. You gotta have the sugar (perspective) and the water (gratitude) in order to get the lemonade.

I used to know this person who, no joke, was the most miserable person I've ever met. Seriously, I can't emphasize enough how angry, hateful and unhappy she was, it was cartoonish. (Side note- I knew her through one of my best friends, who happens to be one of the most glass-half-full people I know. It's a mystery to me how they ended up friends, but the universe works in mysterious ways.)

I can give you a hundred examples of how miserable this woman was, but I'll leave it at this: she managed to make an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Caribbean into her own personal nightmare without anything bad actually happening to her. And it was everyone else's fault that she was so unhappy with it. So there's that.

My point is, this woman was never able to make good things come from a bad situation. She was literally incapable of doing that- to her, a bad situation is and always would be a bad situation. And the worst part of it all is that she's dead now (cancer) so she never had the chance to figure it out. While she was undergoing treatments we went out and had some pretty deep conversations over dinner. Later, when she was too sick to get out, we'd stay home and have those same conversations about mortality and the things she would change in her life if she could go back and do it differently. Even when faced with her own mortality, she stayed unhappy until the end.

I hope with everything I've got, dear friends, that you are gifted with the ability to recognize the good things that come out of a bad situation because I've seen firsthand what kind of monsters people can become when they don't.

So, finally to the point and an answer to the prompt? Learn from people who don't learn from themselves I guess... I have no doubt she touched a lot of people in a positive way- if for no other reason than they could look in the mirror and make the choice to keep water and sugar around so they can make lemons from lemonade.


-TPB