Just Another Lemon Tree

Ignore the dog and focus on the lemon tree.

Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down! 

– Cave Johnson, Portal 2

Don’t get turned off by the fact that this quote comes from a fictional character and from a PC game nonetheless. This quote actually has a lot of meaning to it.

The old adage we’ve heard or been taught by our parents was that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade (this is usually follwed by an exclamation mark to show the enthusiasm!). In layman terms, this means:  take what life gives you and make the best out of it.

Everyone has come to believe this and think that it is right. Just like when I was a kid, my mom would always say, “Tell God your plans if you want him to laugh”. I naively believed and thought that God, somehow made plans for us. Which meant that we didn’t make our plans. So, all our dreams, aspirations and ambitions are thrown out the window because according to the age-old adage, God makes our plans.

I’m not going to go into the religious aspect of this, but let’s think of this from a Catholic/Christian point of view: God gives us life, seven billion people to share it with, in a world with wonders in every corner (except for Florida), he gives us life to do whatever we want to do with it, we stand between the roads of good and bad and we choose which one to take. We make these decisions no one else. 

Yet, we have to believe that our plans don’t amount to squat because a higher power chooses it for us.

Seems flawed, doesn’t it?

Same goes for the lemonade adage. I, just like plenty of people, thought about making the best out of a crappy moment, whether I liked it or not. Then I got to thinking that if you make the best out of a bad situation, you’ll always be stuck in that situation. Stuck in a moment that you can’t get out of.

If you apply this in the real life then what you have are broken dreams and then you’ll be that person telling your kids and friends about that one time life dumped lemons on you and instead of throwing them back, you made a lifetime supply of lemonade.

Look at Lance Armstrong for example: he had testicular cancer, which spread to his lungs and brain. Those were the lemons life gave him – some shitty lemons if you ask me. Did he use those to make lemonade? Well, unless you live under a rock, you’ll know that Lance Armstrong had surgery to remove the cancer and intense chemotherapy. Eventually he got better, started cycling again and won the Tour de France seven consecutive times. 

There are hundreds of success stories from people who had it rough in life or were disabled, like Helen Keller, who was the first deaf blind person to get a Bachelor's Degree, or Stephen Hawking, who has been disabled throughout most of his life and is widely regarded as one of the most important physicists of all time.

So remember, if things aren’t going your way or you find yourself settling for less, take those goddamned lemons, throw them back at life, and say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna’ take this anymore!”

Just like this.

Then make your own fate.