Plant the Lemon Tree

We have probably all heard the famous saying:

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

It is simple, positive, and easy to understand. When something unpleasant happens, try to make something good from it.

I have always liked that idea.

But about two months ago, one of my friends on Facebook wrote something that made me stop.

“If life gives you a lemon, plant a lemon tree.”

I read the sentence once.

Then I read it again.

And I saved it.

I knew I wanted to return to it someday.

Because making lemonade and planting a lemon tree may begin with the same lemon, but they are not quite the same thing.

Making lemonade changes what we have.

Planting the lemon asks what it can become.

We All Receive Lemons

Life has many ways of giving them to us.

Sometimes it is betrayal from someone we trusted. Sometimes it is an insult we didn’t deserve. It can be rejection, failure, injustice, disappointment, or simply discovering that something we hoped for will never happen the way we imagined.

Those are our lemons.

And they are bitter.

I don’t believe we should pretend otherwise.

There is a kind of positivity that asks us to turn every painful experience into something beautiful immediately. I don’t think life works that way.

Some things hurt.

Some things are unfair.

Some experiences leave marks.

Planting the lemon doesn’t mean looking at betrayal and saying, “I’m glad this happened.”

It means saying, “This happened. Now what am I going to do with it?”

There is a big difference.

Put It in the Ground

Imagine holding that lemon in your hand.

You cannot return it.

You cannot change where it came from.

You cannot make the person who gave it to you take it back.

But you can decide what happens next.

So you plant it.

Maybe betrayal teaches you to be more careful with your trust without closing your heart completely.

Maybe rejection sends you in a direction you never planned to take.

Maybe an insult teaches you that other people’s words don’t define your value.

Maybe experiencing injustice makes you more determined to treat others fairly.

Maybe failure teaches you something success never could.

None of these things erase what happened.

The lemon is still a lemon.

But underneath the soil, something is changing.

Roots are growing where nobody can see them.

And perhaps that is how much of our own growth happens too.

Quietly.

Slowly.

Out of sight.

But There Is a Problem

Then I thought about the metaphor a little more.

If I plant a lemon and eventually grow a lemon tree, what will that tree give me?

More lemons.

Lots of them.

That doesn’t sound very encouraging, does it?

After all, wasn’t the lemon supposed to represent something negative?

But perhaps this is where the metaphor becomes even more meaningful.

Growing doesn’t mean reaching a point where nothing bad ever happens again.

Wisdom doesn’t protect us from disappointment.

Strength doesn’t prevent rejection.

Kindness doesn’t guarantee that nobody will betray us.

No matter how much we grow, life will still have bitter moments.

The difference is that we are no longer the same person receiving them.

We have learned what lemons can become.

Now Make the Lemonade

The first lemon taught us how to plant.

The tree taught us patience.

And now, when the new lemons arrive, we have choices.

We can make lemonade.

We can share it.

Perhaps something we learned during one of the hardest periods of our life becomes exactly what another person needs to hear.

Perhaps our disappointment makes us more understanding when someone else is disappointed.

Perhaps the strength we grew becomes shade for somebody who is tired.

And perhaps we take some of those new seeds and plant them again.

One lesson becomes another.

One difficult experience creates wisdom.

That wisdom helps us through the next difficult experience.

And sometimes it helps someone else too.

The cycle continues.

Keep Planting

I don’t want a life without lemons.

Well… perhaps that isn’t completely true.

I certainly wouldn’t complain if life gave me fewer of them.

But I know they will come.

For all of us.

The goal isn’t to convince ourselves that bitter things are sweet.

The goal isn’t to smile through every disappointment or pretend every painful experience was secretly a blessing.

Sometimes a lemon is simply a lemon.

But we still get to decide what we do with it.

We can hold it forever and complain about how bitter it is.

We can throw it away.

We can make lemonade.

Or maybe…

we can put it into the ground.

Give it some time.

Let the roots grow.

And one day, stand beneath a tree that reminds us how much can grow from something we never wanted in the first place.

If life gives you a lemon, plant a lemon tree.

GK