When Life Gives You Lemon, Make Lemonade

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade - Daily Herald - 1993 - Peter Griffiths - Saskatchewan Libraries
Daily Herald January 16, 1993
A popular wall poster carries the message, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". In other words, when things don't turn out like you wanted them to. deal with the reality of what happened, and do the best you can with what you have. This is a realistic and positive slogan, but it's not enough. The key to successful living doesn't lie in just doing your own thing, isolated from others.
Success in life only occurs when you becoming involved with other people, particular at the emotional and supportive level. Lemonade can be quite bitter. Lemonade usually needs a bit of sweetening. In other words besides doing something constructive with the lemons, such as changing what you are able to change and not being stopped by what you can't change, something else needs to be added to life. The lemonade that you get when you have faced and dealt with the unhappiness, hurts or bitterness of life will only become sweeter when you share it with others. So my new version of this popular saying is, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, but share that lemonade with others around you.
This is the basic idea behind the value and helpfulness of self-help groups. You can't go to a self-help or support group to solve your problems or make them disappear. You may start to go to a group with that purpose, but hopefully you quickly discover that nobody, you included, can make the problem disappear or solve if quickly. And hopefully, you also discover that coping with the problem effectively is the best focus, at least at present.
A support group can help you to discover what you can do and what you can't do about the problem. And making lemonade is one of your options. But when you share your story, your frustrations and your journey with others, you automatically add some sweetness to your lemonade. It becomes less bitter. Instead of...