When Life Gives You Lemons

It has been awhile since my last post. The last one on this Blog was aptly a ranting.
I have been rather busy fire-fighting in real life. Like the old adage goes, "When life gives you a basket of lemons ... it's called a Lemon Rampage."

I don't recall who originally said this quote, maybe you do. I know I heard it before from my Grandma, my Mom, a couple of friends, and it gets quoted time and again, probably until you get to experience it for real. I reckon when you begin to feel like a sourpuss, then the lemon must have hit you for real.


I find it rather amusing to watch how life's twists and turns happen to people. There will always be elements of either delight or pleasant surprise, or frustration and disgust. Except when life happens to me personally, and I don't get what I expected and planned for, in a series of unfortunate circumstances, the humour escapes me.


So here I am, a couple of weeks before my birthday, trying to mull my life's "Corona with a Lemon Twist." (I used to call it "birthday blues" as back when I was kid, I had the most annoying ritual of getting a little sick before my birth day actually happens.) In a moment of weakness I told myself maybe I should stop "hoping" and dreaming, as my frustrations seem to get a life if its own acquiring strength and power along the way. Then I remembered these very words, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."


And in a rarer moment of lucidity, I decided to actually use my head to seriously think about how I am coping with my life's frustrations. Not that I don't use my head to think, but my head is mostly filled with trivia and songs that to utilize higher brain functions such as evaluate and discern, gives me serious migraine headaches.


I started by bringing out my favourite Tequila, salt and a couple of lemon slices. to make my own version of Lemonade. And with all the wisdom and intellect I could muster, I asked myself some process questions that will help me better understand what I am dealing with and how I am coping with it:

• Am I overrating a small problem and making it too big to have a solution? Or do I already have a solution except that I haven't acquired the patience to wait for the solution to happen?
• I doubt I am the only one in the entire universe of mankind who has to deal with their fair share of challenges and there are a lot more in worse situations than I am. Then why do I react like the world is against me and my life is completely ruined? As a matter of fact, my life is not ruined at all. I like to think I am suffering because the attention I get feeds my ego.
• Should I not be looking at what I have learned and how much I have gained since I am  totally getting stretched and not many people have the same challenging opportunities than what I am facing? I have grown in leaps and bounds in the past months than in all of my lifetime and I have lived to Blog about it. I am not sick, my faculties are intact, and I can still sing and dance if I want to.
• And perhaps the best thing I can take away from all of these is that certainly in life, we do not always get what we want. Sometimes, even what we love and need get taken away from us yet it does not mean we should stop breathing.

There is no substitute to acceptance borne from clarity enabled by a shot of Tequila.

Yeah, life can be very hard and depressing. 

People can be so disappointing. Sometimes, friends let you down instead of lift you up. Sometimes the very people you have helped in the past will turn their backs on you when you need them or worst, will take you down. A lot more people can really be heartless and mean, I choose not to be like anyone of that breed.

However, it is during these times that I find it important to own up to what I am feeling at the moment, not to dwell on it but to know that it is happening and that I am hurting. It is equally important too to embrace the reality that there are certain issues out of my control but in time, they will all pass.

Whatever it is that seems to be unresolved going on in our lives will soon have their own resolutions, in time. 

Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.

Today, more than ever, I recognize the transitory nature of every matter and every circumstance in the universe and I find the whole concept absolutely redeeming.

The truth is, I really prefer lime to lemonade with my tequila. Salut!

Having a Bad Day/s?

I was told by my wise grandfather that there are no bad days or there is no such thing as bad weather. He said, it's all a matter of how you make of it. 


I had no idea what he meant then, since that conversation took place when I was around 6 years old and I had deficient selective attention. (Fine, the conversation could have happened yesterday and I'd have the same lousy excuse.)


As I was saying, all I took away from those words was a lame attempt of my granddad to make me smile because every time it rained, there was no way I could be swinging from the trees and running around in the small puddles. Not a lot of the kids in their neighbourhood were allowed to run and soak under the rain. Since there were no playmates, I sulked looking out the window, wishing the sun would come out and make it a better day.

In the present day.


Have you ever been jolted out from your sleep with the thought that you may have hit your alarm clock way too many times that you could have missed it? Then you realize, holy guacamole!, it's not a thought or a dream state, you did manage to wreck your clock by whacking it and you are an hour late! You jump out of bed way too fast you stub your toe on your bedside table. Who freakin' thought of putting a bedside table anyway? You limp across the room and run into the bath. Still blinded by sleep and a parked brain, you step on your cat and get a glorious good morning scratch on your shin. And it's the same foot with the throbbing toe! Just crap! 


Fortunately, you manage a bath and brushing your teeth without further injuries and you tread on, still in haste. You grab the hair dryer for a quick fix of your 'do then something snaps, crackles and pops! The dryer explodes right in your hands! What the? You used the 110 dryer out and plugged this into a 220 volt socket. Curses! So you grab a hair clasp and up your hair goes. You hope the people in the meeting would ignore the water dripping from your hair onto your coat's collar. You plan to smile broadly all the time as a decoy.


You ran downstairs, grab a cup of coffee and take a gulp. Double crap! It's scalding hot and you burned 8,000 of roughly 10,000 taste buds.  Worst of all, you spilled coffee on your white shirt and there's no time to rummage soda water in the ref as you need to hit the road. You grab your coat, and will have to move around with a closed jacket to cover the stain spots. Unfortunately, even with all the buttons of the coat closed, the stain peeks out and it's obviously a brown coffee stain. You plan to con the people who may ask to buy into the excuse that you're breastfeeding your baby with cappuccino. But wait, you don't even have a baby!


You remain bullish and undaunted by all these signs, you move on. You grab your shoes, wear it, a sudden pain remind you that your toe is now swollen. You grab another pair, an open-toe one. You give it one look - the right toe is way bigger than the other peeping toe ... but what the hell? 

You get to your car and just when you have almost hit the highway, you scream as you realize you left your laptop back home, where your entire meeting presentation is stored. And because you are stubborn and downright competitive, you didn't want anyone else to have an advance copy of your sheets, you decided not to send an email to have the files (at least) be in the Office server.  You start to tear up and worry about smearing your mascara then you remember, you hardly have any make up on. 


You grab your mobile phone to call the Office to tell them that you may be running late and find that there is only one bar left on your mobile phone battery. You call a colleague but the number can't be reached. You try the Office land line and pray someone picks up the phone; hopefully those jerks are not busy horsing around or having breakfast or tea in the pantry. Somebody answers!  Yes, your luck just turned better. You are screeching in the middle of a hysterical, panic attack and the person on the other line tells you to calm down; the meeting has been reset to a later date, since one of the key decision makers had to fly urgently out of town. In both excitement and annoyance, you accidentally slam on the brakes, the bigger idiot behind you whams into your car! Just as you stepped out of your car, it rains.

I was told by my wise grandfather that there are no bad days or there is no such thing as bad weather. He said, it's all a matter of how you make of it.


Surely not all of my days are as eventful as this one, of course, it's not a bad hair day either. It's just a series of things happening to me and could be happening to someone else, and I consider them to be just that... things going wrong. And if I have ever learned one thing in how I make it out of a day like this, things can really go from bad to worst, but I believe there are better days. 


I simply just let it go for the day!