Learning to Make Lemonade
When I think of summer, I often think of lemonade — a nice, thirst-quenching, icy-cold glass of pure yum. I will confess that I rarely make it from scratch — frozen concentrate works quite well for my children’s lemonade stands. But I do know that the “from scratch” recipe isn’t that hard; essentially, it’s lemon juice, water and sugar (as well as ice, to give it that essential coolness).
This morning, I was reminded by a colleague that “when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade” — and this old adage got me thinking. In the context of life, when life provides the lemons what are the life equivalents of water, sugar and ice? Given that I’ve got a few lemons being handed to me right now, this seems like a good question for me to ponder. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
Life lemonade is made up of the lemons that life provides, as well as plenty of openness (water), and trust (sugar). The openness on your part is absolutely required — it makes the pure lemon juice more palatable, even without sugar. And the openness is about having both an open heart, and an open mind. When making life’s lemonade, it’s essential for you to be open to the idea that something good can and will get created, or at least emerge, from the lemons.
The sweetness of the beverage is provided by trust. If you’re going to make life lemonade, you’ve got to trust that the universe isn’t handing you anything you can’t handle, and that you’ve got the creative genius to end up with something that serves. When you stand in the place of trust, you willingly let go of the control demons that can make any situation sour, and allow the lemons to be transformed into something that’s more than simply palatable (which is what happens when you add the openness, aka water) — it’s down-right pleasant.
So now, you’ve got a beverage that’s almost perfect. It’s just not cold enough. And if you want it to be cold — you’ve got to add the element of time. That’s right, give it time to chill. It’s funny that in colloquial terms, the word “chill” means to “relax”. If you’re making life lemonade, you’ve got to relax and allow time for the perfect beverage to brew.
Bottom-line is this: if life hands you lemons, you can end up with a really good, life-enhancing lemonade. All you’ve got to do is add the right amount of openness, trust and time, and all will be well. The metaphor seems to fit for me right now. Here’s hoping it works for you.
Opening Yourself to Joy
Joy. Today, I’m feeling called to write about joy, and more than that, to experience it, to savour it. Of course, even as I feel called to joy, I find myself getting curious about what it means. I mean, I know what it feels like, I know what I feel as the quality of joy. But what is it outside of myself?
Free Online Dictionary defines “joy” as “intense or especially ecstatic or exultant happiness” — yeah, that works for me. And when I think about how others describe their joyful moments, I feel like this definition works for them too. There is something that goes beyond mere happiness that is found in the quality of joy. Joy is happiness enriched, heightened, and magnified. In other words, it’s like the best of happiness, concentrated. Yummy.
One of the things that I find myself currently curious about, is the “how” of things, in this case, “how” to experience joy. I mean let’s face it, some moments are joyful, others are not, some are in between. And while I do hold as truth the idea that all moments are inherently good, even when they feel icky, I’ve gotta confess, I do prefer joy — I am human after all. So if I can find out how to experience more of the joy, I’d like to do that.
A couple of years ago, when I was engaged in a leadership course, one of my journal entries explored the nature of joy. And I remember writing something which still feels like a paradoxically simple yet profound realization: the key to experiencing joy can be found in the acronym of the word “joy” itself. “J.O.Y.” can be used as an acronym for Just Open Yourself — and my experience, when I bother to examine it and contemplate it, reflects this instruction.
When I just open myself to life experiences, when I stand in a state of openness to the world around me, I inevitably invite and experience more joy in my life. In truth, I experience more of everything when I open myself to the world — and joy becomes part of that. I guess what I’m realizing is that, in order to experience more joy, I must open myself to all of life, knowing that experiencing joy requires me to experience more of life as a whole. The condition of being joyful, implies and indeed requires an openness of heart — and openness to all that life has to offer, so that joy can be experienced fully.
My bottom-line today is this: you can’t open yourself to only one aspect of life. When you move through life in only a semi-open state, you only experience a semi-life. In order to experience life unequivocally, you must open yourself unequivocally and see that all of experiences, even the icky ones, lead to joy in some measure. Just Open Yourself. Joy is yours when you do.