Lemonade

By Sherrie Cassel

Life isn’t fair; I don’t know why I’ve thought all these years that life should be, that after all I’ve been through, life should be kinder to me, and that somehow, I was entitled to fairness (in lieu of justice, of course). Instead, I developed a hateful persona who hurt a lot of people. I asked my beloved if he thinks I am a nice person. He, of course, answered in the affirmative. He didn’t know me during my anger phase. He is a kind man. He possesses the type of kindness I want to emulate. Life finally provided me with a wonderful man, despite the socks I find on the floor by the side of the bed each day. Love makes you overlook some things about your partner. I’m sure he overlooks my many imperfections. Maybe life can be fair as, retrospectively, I consider all the paths we had to cross to find each other; we are perfect for one another. We are well-suited, after 15 years of living together, married for 11 years. Nothing good comes easy.

I think of the lifetimes I’ve had, different seasons, transformation as I continue morphing until I lose my faculties or die. What a somber proposal. We die and, wisdom, I think, should be doled out at the beginning of our lives, not the inevitable end. But then again, life isn’t fair.

One of the greatest books I read after my son died was, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. He also lost a son, to progeria. His son was only 14 years old. Rabbi Kushner blamed no one for the death of his son. He said it was the luck of the draw. Of all the people in the world, a certain number will die from complications of progeria; a certain number will die from alcoholism and heroin use. Some die in accidents. But we all will die.

Where we live is in between our birth and our death. I have lived fully for some time now. If you knew my “story”, you’d understand a few of my personal epochs, but in the keeping with the topic of life isn’t fair, it’s not and I’ve stopped wishing for it to be so. I handle catastrophes differently than I used to. I have better tools and more prosocial behavior. Best-case scenario, we take our life experiences as they come, both painful and painless, and allow them to shape us into better people than we had to be when we were in a performance mode, and when we were in survival mode.

Life isn’t fair, but we still have mystical and magical, dare I say, supernatural experiences that move us and that inspire us to be greater than we thought we could be, and to create from the wellspring of awe.

Where are you in your life right now? Are you high on life or are you deep in grief? The errant belief that we should never suffer does nothing to help us grow; we only get stuck in resentment stemming from the belief that our *entitlement* wasn’t quite forthcoming. Sometimes we become mired in resentment, so much so that pro-social personal development is deterred, sometimes for years sometimes for a lifetime.

Think of your happiest memory; feel it; immerse yourself in it, and let it inform how you approach life. I’m not saying that we get to *choose* to be happy when our world is crashing down around us. We will have hard times; there’s just no two ways about it. “On everyone a little rain must fall” (Allan Roberts (lyrics) and Doris Fisher (melody). There’s also no way to *prepare* yourself for chance’s random hits.

The best we can do is work on our personal development, so that when we are torpedoed by chaotic and painful moments, we’re strong enough to handle them with grace and courage. I’ve said it myself, that the length of time for grief is indefinite. I thought so early in my grief process, and I believe I took longer than was healthy. Now that I can siphon all the love from a happy memory, my days are more joy-filled than when I was deep in the throes of chronic emotional pain. Certainly, I have had days when I need a good cry because I do so miss my son.

I’ve learned that while life’s random offerings are inevitable, I can handle whatever comes hurtling out of the cosmos. With an acceptance of our loved ones deaths comes the liberation from hurtful ruminations over which we never, if we ever did, have control. With acceptance of the unfairness of life, there is liberation from guilt, resentment, and self-destruction; it also shortens the amount of time you will grieve to the pits of your souls.

I wrote a paper in college, when I was very young, in which I demanded that change was not a good thing for me; I came from chaos, so order was very important to me. The kind of controlled order that presupposes I had the power to stop the world from spinning. I didn’t then and I don’t now. Facing my 60s, the ability to let go of blame when life doesn’t give me roses, forces me to tend to my nasturtiums, morning glories, or some other living entity I can pour my love into, and I move on to the next step that will lead to a life of as much joy as I (we) can glean from life experience.

I went through hell to get here, for no rhyme nor reason; it’s just the way life played out for me. I accept responsibility for how I’ve handled myself through the catastrophic moments in my life. I accept responsibility for my emotions and for their duration. I accept that joy is flighty, and so we must grab it when it flies overhead. Joyful moments are just as unpredictable as catastrophic ones. We will know joy and we will know sorrow, and the entire spectrum of emotions, as we currently understand them.

No, life isn’t fair and once we let down our guard enough to let others back into our lives, we become vulnerable again to loving others and making new memories even as we hold on to our old ones — and we also open ourselves up to further loss followed by temporary emotional pain. But if we are truly a hedonistic species, then it would make sense that we strive toward pleasure, and happy memories feel so much better than bad ones.