Grrr.
You know the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”? I actually do like this humorous little reminder that no matter how bad things seem, we can usually find something good – a little glint of sunshine peeping through the dark clouds – to help pull us through. And it is important to try and be positive when life is bleak.
But you know what? Sometimes you just have to be in the bleak for a bit, because that’s where you are.
Sometimes life gives you lemons, lots of them, but you actually can’t make lemonade, because lemonade requires sugar AND YOU DON’T HAVE ANY! Hello! Sometimes, life is just bitter and you have to deal with the bitterness without the sugar, without the nice clean glass and the bendy straw. With luke-warm water and no ice. Without the citric acid and whatever else goes into making lemonade. To use an awful but apposite phrase, you just have to suck it up.
Then, while you’re doing that, you realise that the lemons aren’t even those nice, juicy ones that you can eat in thin slices on a hot day. They’re the mouth-puckeringly, nose-wrinklingly sour variety, and they’re full of pips. You know what, they could even be the rindless lemons which have fallen to the ground because the possums have colonised your lemon tree, and eaten the lemon rind as an entree, before moving on to other tasty foliage in your garden.
Yep – you guessed right – it’s been one of those days. Heck, not even one of those days – one of those 24 hours. Well, let’s be honest – one of those years. Not an “Is ISIS in my town and will I be alive at the end of the day?” sort of year, but tough nevertheless.
When every road you turn down holds out the hope of something better, but turns out to be just another dead end. Where lies, secrecy and angry, aggressive defensiveness trample all over patient, calm and open attempts to help. Where wombats run from something they fear, but – not looking where they are going – run into something worse.
The phrase “blind panic” holds real meaning for me. Because one of my Dancing Wombats suffers severely from this. Although it is probably more accurate to say “blind and deaf panic”. There are none so blind as those who will not see; none so deaf as those who will not hear. It is impossible to calm anyone whose immediate response is to flee from what they fear, and then – having fled – to turn back and lash out, trying to fight it. There is no room or negotiation, no room for listening, for even trying to sort out the issue calmly and objectively. So the person fleeing is making all their decisions in a highly emotional state, which is not particularly conducive to rational thinking.
In the end, it is wearing dealing with people who consider that nothing is ever their fault. It is bewildering and exhausting that they cannot understand how their actions create reactions – consequences – that they and others have to deal with. The biblical admonition not to let the sun go down on your anger is very wise. But even if you don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and go to bed feeling soothed, the actions taken in the grip of that anger can nevertheless have far-reaching consequences.
It’s great to wake up to each new day as a new beginning. But our futures are shaped to some extent by our past. And sometimes it is incredibly hard for the beserker waking up peacefully in the morning to understand that. Surely everything will be just as it was before? They don’t recall exactly what was done or said while impassioned and they struggle to deal with the fall-out. And that makes it hard for those around them to do so as well.
We carry the burdens of others to help them get through their challenges, because they can’t manage alone. It’s important to help people and it’s vital that we encourage and cajole and don’t give up on others – especially when they seem to be giving up on themselves. But we also need to recognise that we can only carry their burdens for so long before they start weighing us down too, and we wonder whether they will ever develop the resilience to shoulder the weight themselves.
I like to think positively. I think that positivity embodies hope, and without hope of something better, well, there’s not much point in doing anything, really. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t acknowledge that there are sometimes truly revolting, difficult, mind-bendingly distressing times. Times where life is like a tangled ball of wool and you can’t work out one end from the other, let alone which way you’re supposed to be going. Where, briefly, you even find yourself contemplating giving up. Only… giving up isn’t an option.
If life gives you lemons – even the sour, pippy ones – and no sugar for lemonade, there is always another option. Fish and chips, anyone?
