About the broken eggs and lemons in life

I live in a world continually subjected to second-guessing and devil's advocacy which, out of necessity, I have learned to supress at all costs.  I do not think that I am any different from most others in this regard, it is just that I seem to place myself in vulnerable positions more often than the average person.  Activist innovator doers have a habit of doing just that.

When we are not chasing rainbows, taking on causes and treading into the unknown we find ourselves deflecting the woulda, shoulda, coulda analystic influences in our lives.  Maybe at the end of the proverbial day, one balances the other out -- I don't know.  The bottom line is that we are the masters of our own destiny and that we accomplish nothing if we give in to negativity, be it of our own making, the victimization of others or pure happenstance.

I have interviewed  several individuals recently who I greatly admire because they have overcome severe setbacks and circumstances that were beyond their control.  One describes his experience as the equivalent of being kicked squarely in the genital area and knocked to his knees while the other speaks of the nausea that accompanies disappointment, embarrasment and heartbreak.  While they come from differing cirumstances, they both had one thing in common -- the ability to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and make the best of the devestating situations in which they found themselves.

An old friend who I often quote, has an interesting analogy involving the cooking of eggs.  "You can't make an omlette without breaking the eggs," he says.  "If, though, you really feel determined to keep the eggs in one piece, you can always cook something else.  If you are dealing with a tray full of eggs that are already broken, however, you may as well use them up.

"What he was saying is that there is no point in wishing that a certain situation had never come about or thinking in retrospect about how the end result could have been much different.  What is done, is done, and the only way to improve it is to accept the unalterable and to go about seeing what can be made of it.

It's all about another analogy, making lemonade out of lemons.  The end result can be quite surprising and palatable beyond our fondest expectations.