Can You Really Turn Lemons Into Lemonade?

I’m sure almost everyone is familiar with the saying ‘when life hands you lemons make lemonade’ and I for one believe in it; for the most part. I believe everyone at some point or another in their life will be ‘handed a lemon’ although this may come in an enormous variety of events. The trick, apparently, is to take that negative circumstance, whatever it may be, and turn it into something positive. Sounds great in theory but can it really be done in real life?

Sometimes of course the answer is an obvious ‘yes’ but often times there’s a lingering ‘no’. Take my own story for example. I had wanted to be a writer for as long as I could remember but getting to that point is not as simple as it sounds and one thing you have to have is the luxury of time to actually write that first novel. I had entered the Administration and Secretarial fields following high school and surprisingly, for someone with my particular temperament, I actually did quite well at it. That was my life for many years. Then I suffered a very debilitating injury and could no longer work in that field. Definitely a lemon.

Now what to do with that lemon? I chose to go to University and study Ancient History, particularly Egyptology, and to use my spare time to finally sit down and write that novel. It turned out pretty good, good enough to be published so I did and voila my writing career finally began; definitely what you’d call lemonade. However, I still live every single day with severe pain from my injury and that also leaves me limited in quite a few areas of life. So, despite all the good I still have the original lemon.

I’m pretty sure that my situation, in one form or another, probably applies to most of us. Yes you can turn lemons into lemonade but at its’ heart lemonade is made from lemons so you can never truly escape the ‘lemon’ completely. I’m absolutely not saying that we shouldn’t always try to take each one of life’s situations and make the best of it. As Monty Python said ‘always look on the bright side of life’; just remember that if you still have a lingering ‘lemon’ doesn’t in any way mean that you have failed. All that means is you’re human with all that word entails.