Last Updated on September 2, 2024
The orange is a beautiful thing. It is more attractive. It tastes better. It is more nutritious. Why couldn’t life hand us oranges? My boss…he got an orange! Frank Ocean got an orange! Mark Zuckerberg got a whole basket of oranges! Nicholas Cage! Well actually he is no longer a member of the celebrity citrus circle. But a lot of celebrities have oranges! All of these people have oranges; life must just be throwing as many oranges from the sky as there are pointless shows on television. Why are we stuck sitting here with lemons?
Okay take a breath; that’s enough of the analogies for a while. But seriously; why are we stuck here going through the same mundane routine every day, living the same boring lives, and doing the same boring things when people are out there getting rich and famous over night? Why can’t that be me?
The honest answer is something that none of us want to hear. It’s something that we don’t want to face. The reality is that we need to stop wishing and start doing. I’m going to reference the lemons and oranges analogy for a second, so before you decide to sentence me to death by citrus please hear me out.
Imagine if life gave you a basket of lemons. Great (that’s not too hard to imagine for some of us). Now what? You hate lemons and they are useless. What do you do? Naturally…you wish for oranges. It’s our instinct to want what someone else has when we are discontent. So what do you do? You ignore the lemons. You drop them down a gutter or toss them out the window – and then go back to wishing we had oranges.
While you were busy wishing we had something else we completely missed out on the opportunity that was presented before you. No this is not literal. Lemons only serve as a simile here. What I mean is that while we are busy wishing we were living someone else’s life, we aren’t living our own.
So what can we do about this? Well the obvious answer is that we can start living our own lives and our own moments instead of trying to live someone else’s – but that answer sounds pretty lame to me. Think about it for a second. How many other people’s lives would you swap places with if you could? Comment below and let us know. Why do I have this mentality? Good question! You see, the root of the problem is a couple of simple things.
First of all, we need to be content with our own lives. That would help the situation quite a bit. It’s not about having a perfect life – no one does. It’s about examining your life and being grateful for what you have. Remember that some people would kill for the lives we live (pun not intended). Seriously, sit down and think for a while about your life. Try to be unbiased because your immediate reaction is probably to say everything sucks. Really think about it. Maybe you do have lemons, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do something about it.
That brings me to my second point; do something about it. Do something to change your life. Take risks. Live a little. It’s not like we can’t dig ourselves out of this routine we establish of waking up, going to work, coming home, watching some T.V. or something mindless, and then going to bed. You can always change things, even if on some days it has to be boring, that just means you have to make the most out of the other days. If you don’t do anything to change it, nothing will change. It’s that simple.
We need to wake up from the doze of everyday life. We need to stop wishing for oranges and start using the lemons we’ve got. Who knows? Maybe if we use the lemons a nice big orange will plop down right on our plate one day. We are all human beings reading this article (I’m pretty sure) and so that means we have all been given the gift of a sentient life. That is pretty powerful in my opinion, and I would actually consider that an orange. But even if you think that’s a lemon, it is still a gift. And after all, what is the point of that gift if we don’t use it to its fullest potential?
