You’ve done all the right things. You did every step and beyond. You calculated your "what-if’s" and prepped as best as you could. You thought, if maybe you did all the right things with the right intentions, life will back off just enough for you to catch your breath, but when life hands you lemons, make lemonade...right? We are all familiar with the old adage that is code for, sorry you didn’t get what you initially wanted but you can definitely work with this, but what happens when you don't get just one lemon, but a whole bushel? What are we to do when it seems as if we were already struggling to tread water and then someone just strapped a few weights on and told us to swim a lap?
Everyone has experienced this fear of the unknown; the panic of feeling completely unprepared and afraid to take another step because you don’t know how you can without dropping everything. This moment can and is often inspired by moments that we could never predict, such as losing a loved one or a job, failing a test or a class, getting in an accident, getting more homework, having another test and the list goes on. This may be a cynical view, that if things are already bad they can never get better. This is obviously not true, as the sun always rises no matter how dark the night. However, I know from personal experience and talking with close friends, that it is easy to feel that it's sometimes impossible to catch a break.
It often happens that life doesn’t just hand you but throws you more lemons when you’re already juggling the last few that life sent you; and just before you’ve memorized the recipe for the perfect sweet-with-a-little-kiss-of-tart lemonade you get thrown more challenges. So I ask again, what is a person to do? I argue that we already know the answer. The answer is shown in the fact that you are reading this. You juggled all those lemons so well, your local circus should be in touch shortly! Ultimately, you conquered whatever it was that made you tremble with uncertainty and fear of inadequacy. Maybe it wasn’t that graceful. Maybe like a newborn giraffe, you stumbled and fell and could barely stand on your own so you learned to lean on others for support. Also, this innate sense to survive and to problem solve is in all of us. Yes, some of us are more prone to feel fear or anxiety greater than others due to circumstance or just intrinsic factors, but we all experience it. No one is immune.
My point is this: we are all handed things when we barely feel prepared for them. The raise in heart rate, frantic thoughts, and quick shallow breaths are all signs that you are staring in the face of the very thing that can make you grow. It is an opportunity to rise to the occasion or to break down and rebuild stronger than before, to stare back at that fear/bushel of lemons and say, “You will not defeat me. You will not be the reason I stop. I will overcome this and though I may not come out on the other side unscathed, I will wear those cracks and scars with pride because they mean that I survived.” Moments when we think to ourselves that we just can’t do it, we can’t handle more crap on top of the pile of crap we were already trying to deal with, are moments that challenge us and test our resilience and values. These chapters in life are character building and essential to show us how strong we truly are, by making us feel weak and proving that we are indeed stronger than our fears and any lemons that get thrown our way.
