You are lucky when life hands you lemons. You can always make a big jug of lemonade, add some good dash of sugar, chill them and have a good drink 🙂

Besides, lemons are good for the health. They are natural diuretics and pack a good punch of Vitamin C, so it’s not too bad.

Sometimes, life hands you a basket of maggot infested rotten tomatoes. What do you do? Do you just throw your hands up in the air, roll up and do nothing?

Of course not! In as much as it’s easier said than done, you have to roll up your sleeves, scratch the ground, or buy a few pots if you don’t have sufficient ground to pasture and cultivate the seeds of the rotten tomatoes.

With proper tending, you will surely have a bountiful harvest.

Let me break this down to relatable terms.

In our lives, everyone has a story to tell and some sour lemons to squeeze in-between. Some stories are prettier than others, some stories are just so rough, but the big question is how each of this curve ball thrown is handled by the bearer.

So many episodes in my life come to my mind, but I don’t think I am in the mental frame of mind to traipse down the ‘woe is me avenue.’

Let me dwell on a situation that yielded positive fruits.

At some point when I started out my work life, as a young recruit with Bureau Veritas, my starting salary was not only meagre, I had the bulk of the grunt of work tossed at me to the extent that when others were carrying their bags to say goodnight, I was still shuffling a lot of work, yet I would turn up earlier than virtually everyone else.

The only person who equally came that early was my French Managing Director who lived close by and I had no idea that he was observing my work ethics.

Despite feeling at times like the plankton in that ocean, I chose to give it my best, both attitude wise and work-wise. In no time, most customers who came for their shipment papers wanted me to attend to them.

Within months of joining the company, I received end of month bonus, for outstanding staff of the month for four consecutive months and this set off some sort of competition in the office where my senior colleagues tried to wrangle over who would win the next set of bonuses.

While they were still doing office politics, the Managing Director sent for me. His senior assistant was leaving the company and he wanted me to move up and work as his Assistant with very significant salary increase.

Initially, I was scared of stepping into those shoes, but wearing that hat orchestrated a lot of good things that came by my way.

Perhaps, if I had spent my time grumbling and just coasting by with the job, that chain of favour would have passed me by.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

The Daily Post Lemonade.