Destiny Gave You Lemons

Knowing Your Destiny

Part 9 of 30

We know it’s proverbial, sometimes life gives you lemons. Which, unless you successfully make lemonade for a living -- I tried it as a kid and made about a dollar -- you're better off going into apples. The proverb about lemons refers to their sour side and your destiny. You take a big suck off a lemon and the first thing you’ll do, your lips and mouth collapsing on themselves, is pucker up. Your brain knows it's coming, but when those sour drops meet a mouth in equilibrium, they're not disturbed by the brain. Your whole system responds to the lemons with an attitude of “That’s nasty!” 

Someone told me a long time ago that if you get too much lemon juice in your mouth -- the straight stuff -- it can badly affect your teeth, as in messing up the enamel, and I guess that makes them more prone to decay. Fortunately we didn’t get too many lemons when we were kids, because I couldn’t have taken it. My teeth are already fairly bad, and so for anything involving lemons I'd need a bunch of toothbrushes. More often I avoid lemons, actually whenever possible, and even lemon drop candy isn’t that great.

If we're talking about generally negative life events and not literal lemons, that could be your destiny. It's one sour thing after another. And you're spinning your wheels, desperately trying to make "lemonade." But what for? Certainly not to drink yourself. But to put your skills to work, whatever negative bent they've taken, to make the most of your life, even if to now it's a negative output. It's done all the time. But if this is really what you choose to do, I'm not too sure I'd want to know you. It's sort of like, saying, "Yeah, they're bad for me, but that doesn't keep me from making a profit off the suffering and misery of others. Maybe I can find a bunch of desperate guys downtown, get them hooked on lemonade, make a great profit, and if their teeth fall out, that's their problem."

Of course business works that way all the time. "Buyer beware, anything for a buck, it's their funeral." To a certain extent we know it's wrong, but there's very little regulation (as far as I know) involving lemons. Kind of weird. If you made airplanes that were guaranteed to crash, we wouldn't stand for a policy of "Buyer beware." Too much danger for the common good, clearly, whereas if you immediately lose the enamel off your teeth and have to gum bread for the rest of your life, that's something the overall system doesn't care about. I personally hate exploitation like that, but like I said, I tried to sell lemonade as a kid, so I'm just as guilty. Except I was unsuccessful, saw the error of my ways and repented, and immediately closed up shop until heroin became popular.

It's true that I favor certain restrictions on behalf of personal welfare -- I'm mentally half-nanny -- but naturally you can't save everyone forever. Maybe it's their destiny to be served lemons, lemons, lemons everyday, all the time. Lemon-flavored bread, cheesecake, steak sauce, everything you can think of right down to the lowly lemon-flavored turkey drumstick. All those people have to make a living too, and they don't know one mouth from another. You have the bad teeth, you have to make your own choices.

Mentality Half-Formed, Totally Stupid

No. 13 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

Through this hardhitting guidance counselor series, I have rightly portrayed myself as the aggrieved party. With the guidance counselor being the supposedly responsible adult with an actual profession of “guidance” and “counseling” to uphold and perform. Far from what I was, an innocent high school kid, not an adult, with the innocent psyche of a half-formed, mentally bereft person, barely there at all.

It's so hard to picture me as immature, but I was. Because look at me today. People look at me, they point to me, maybe they read my blog and say, “There’s no one more mature, more responsible or qualified to lead the youth of tomorrow.” And it’s so true. I always take the position most aligned with good behavior, benefits for all, and responsibility. It’s not for nothing that my blog was voted “Best Blog to Fall Asleep To” three years in a row by the juvenile delinquents in my neighborhood. It was also a true survey, the results not determined, like most, by payoffs.

But I seriously wasn’t precisely an infant in a playpen in high school, but virtually. I didn’t know anything about anything. If you would’ve told me that babies came from baby factories and parents picked them up, I would’ve believed it. The closest thing to sex I knew was dirty magazines, which in those days weren’t explicit. More cartoons than anything, all hinting around about something but never quite coming out and showing it. Not like we have today, a fully inflamed wanton moisturized ready-to-go double-page spread and engraved invitation unmistakable in begging eyes.

So when I showed up at the guidance counselor’s office, I wasn't ready to be under his thumb and wasn't prepared to take him on. I appreciate it today that kids are schooled a lot more in what adults can do to them and the signs they need to watch for and the responsible things to do as a response. Back then they simply trusted adults and suspected kids of being dummies, which I at least was.

So we might wonder how did wrestling coaches get away with so much? And how did guidance counselors manage to break their students psychologically? With so few consequences. There was an stupid innocence and lack of awareness then that adults are up to no good if given half a chance. So these guys could commit murder and it'd be your fault...

It makes my blood boil, at least simmer, to see an adult guidance counselor in the same playpen as an innocent baby (representing me) wailing like he’s somehow the aggrieved party. I’d like to grab that lousy stinking bastard by the scruff of the neck, or let’s say cinch his tie up a little tighter for him. Then with his head straining like a filthy pimple, engage him toward expanding his professional disciplinary horizons. "You bastard" is right! How dare you?!

My Friend D— Died in a Terrible Accident

In my usual way of thinking I try to keep mortality out of my mind. I’m so used to living — it’s become a habit — I’m not thinking of dying. That said, the opposite is also true. I’m a walking precaution against dying. Like the nervous bird forever bobbing its head, watching for danger. The habit of survival. I swerve to miss a three-car pileup or sidestep a hole to not trip.

This is actually something you don’t want to think about a lot. Even if it’s not far from your mind. Because the more conscious you are of the process, the less reliably your defenses work in the background. It’s true. The more you consciously think of anything, the more you are consciously responsible. And background processes are very reliable. If we could go through life entirely unconscious and yet happy, we’d avoid the whole mess.

OK, since most of it’s delegated to unconscious processes, that leaves me consciously able to watch out for others’ safety. So I’m a warning-a-minute: “Watch out for that hole, someone’s following us, have you got your keys?," etc.

But I suddenly failed! Coming out of store with friend, D----, I turned my head for three seconds to check out the sale on bottled water, which I don't even drink, and even though I'd very recently warned her to look both ways, I let down my guard for three seconds, leading to a terrible end... When...

It wasn’t the driver’s fault. Unless the fact that he was going 45 mph in a dangerous parking lot is set at his bumper. No, despite my prior warning — was it a case of her being pigheaded? — she walked right into the truck’s path. But it couldn’t have been intentional, not the way she was protecting her sack of groceries. Clearly she meant to live at least long enough to eat a four-pack of yogurt; she didn’t mean to die before that.

Still, I can’t see any value in restricting cause and effect to the physical. There’s also the mental. She had bad habits, one of which was depending too much on me. Because I usually do give constant warnings. But you still gotta look at for yourself, Doris! What if you’d lived and I’d died? You would’ve died anyway if you couldn't wise up to danger. Did she deserve to get run over? She probably didn’t technically deserve it, but the jury’s still out on whether there was a moral verdict waiting for her to receive sooner or later. Still, who am I to dump on her? People make mistakes, they pay the piper.

It took me a couple days beating myself up to finally reconcile things; this wasn’t my fault. Get on with your life. Easy come, easy go. Another day, another dollar. Plus, I have to save my energy for the guy’s trial.

I hate to face the guy again, as much ragging on him I did. It wasn't a good picture of me, cussing him up one side and down the other. Blaming his passenger for distracting him, without evidence. And I even blamed his truck, an old fashioned model that you usually only see at garden centers, with the hood up and a bunch of flowers where the motor used to be. “What are you driving that rickety old piece of shit through the parking lot at 45 mph anyway, Stupid?!”

It took the police to calm me down. I was in a rage, lunging at the guy. And his stupid antique truck. What kind of tires are those? Model T’s?! The police calmed me down fast, Officer Rix pulling a gun and threatening to blow my brains out. He calmly explained, “Your friend was a complete klutz to get herself run over so stupidly.” Which of course I had to accept as true.

My own purchase that day was Neapolitan ice cream. Three flavors for the price of one. I meant for me and Doris to enjoy a bowl each, had only she lived. As it turned out, though, tragically, that meant two bowls for me. It’s a good way to drown your sorrows; eat more ice cream.

So ... one friend down, several friends left. Who really should listen to me more. Permit me, this is rough. ... Doris will never get another chance to do the right thing. She had to let her mind drift off who-knows-where, thinking, “I’m 100% safe, nothing can ever happen to me, my fate’s a long ways away, I’m young-ish, invulnerable-ish, I’ve got lots of plans for tomorrow,” etc. People like her are always making plans for tomorrow, completely unaware that the clutching hand of fate is already clamped tight around their neck.

But I definitely saw it. In the seconds after exiting the store and the screech of the tires and her scream, the sky was cloudy, ponderous, foreboding. But was it already too late for Doris? That’s for philosophers wiser than I to debate. She was definitely run over and by the time I got home my ice cream was softer than I like.

It made me think, God took my friend’s life to teach me an important lesson, which was probably “Look Out for Trucks,” which I already knew.

Adversity Sucks -- Deal With It

Yesterday as part of the "Drive for Pride" I was teaching on the subject of getting your duties accomplished, of being a responsible person.

1) It's good for your own sense of things; 2) The rest of us will hate you that much less. Because we are sick and tired of the half-witted irresponsibility of the world, particularly of those who come into contact with us.

How hard is it to be responsible? How hard is it to think ahead, to rub two stinking thoughts together long enough to reach some kind of intelligent conclusions? How difficult is it to plan ahead and think about what you're going to need for a rainy day? It drives me crazy that there are these folks out there who get their back up against the wall because they haven't got the sense to foresee what their actions (or lack of actions) will yield.

Then when the rain starts to fall, then when the bills come due, that's when you hear from them. And you'd like to backtrack and say: What did you do at this point? What did you do at that point? Why weren't you taking certain precautions? Why weren't you putting something away for this? Why weren't you on top of the situation back then? Did you not notice that this problem was getting bigger all the time instead of smaller? Sheesh.

No, no, no. Just hope and pray. Maybe tomorrow won't come. Maybe I'll win the big lottery. Maybe God will provide. Actually God was trying to get your attention all along, that you need to be diligent all along the way and not let these tiny problems become gigantic. God was shouting at you the whole time, but you didn't seem to notice.

Now adversity is your lot in life ... and suddenly it's someone else's worry. Because you need bailed out. Your irresponsibility is suddenly my problem.

Of course I'm not thinking of any particular incident here. Just extrapolating the way it would be if a case like this were to arise.

Well, here's the bad news. I'll give you the bad news in a few sentences: 1) Hoping and praying doesn't get it done; 2) Tomorrow will come, every time; 3) You aren't going to win the big lottery; 4) God wants to provide but He's not going to provide it in one lump sum. God provides for you all along the way, but it's up to you to save, not squander. Remember the story of Joseph and the seven years of plenty and the seven years of want? God provided when the seven years of plenty were going on. Then it was Joseph's sense that meant they had food during the seven years of want. 5) You have the same mental abilities as responsible people, you just didn't use them. (In this hypothetical, extrapolated case.)

If you don't want your back up against the wall -- because tomorrow does come -- take care of your life today. That's a "Drive for Pride" teaching that will come in very very handy, if you follow it.