Lemonade.
If there is one thing certain about life, it’s that there will be an eternal supply of lemons.
What is a lemon?
Broadly speaking, anything that can make us sour.
Our plans, despite being a source of comedic material for God, seldom get enacted without a hitch.
The question I ponder this Monday as I recover from the ‘week that was,’ is, what to do when life hands us Lemons?
The proverbial wisdom is of course to make lemonade.
What is the secret of this metaphysical recipe?
Lemon (an unfavourable circumstance) + Water + Sugar = Winning.
Even though these days I am a low-carb-kind-of-guy, sugar and water have their place.
The backstory; there I was, bumbling along, internally complaining about how busy I was. My list is like medusa, I strike one to-do off, only for 7 more to be added.
Enter the lemon.
Rain. A lot of it. Nothing inherently wrong with that; the trees and dams are happy. The water ingress into our bedrooms, however, shot citric acid straight into my veins.
At the time I could have cursed Mother Nature. Pretty quickly I realised that would be disingenuous and also a little out of alignment with my view that she is a wise (and sometimes cruel) Goddess here to support us.
On closer inspection, several of my DIY plumbing and drainage solutions failed concurrently and catastrophically.
This one’s on me.
As day broke and we woke up to slightly soggy Afghan carpets, I began to speculate, how bad is it?
Can I dry the floorboards without ripping them up?
A quick youtube and chat with a LLM left me wincing at the sour taste; I found out I had 24 hours until mould would grow in our ‘floating’ floating floor.
Being a fan of all things wood, I had chosen engineered timber floor, which is particularly susceptible to moisture induced mould.
I feverishly set about doing what any responsible homeowner would do; we cleared the bedrooms rooms out and I pried up a few boards ‘just to see.’
I was hoping to salvage the boards, dry them out for a quick relay and have the floor back down before dinner.
‘Ha’ God must have said.
I cranked every available heater and blasted the fans.
A few hours into my flooring sojourn, the taste of pungent lemon fresh in my mouth, I discovered what I feared; mould.
Huh?
The boards had been wet for less than 12 hours. No way it was from that.
Up until now, I had been cursing that this as a waste of a day.
As darkness settled, instead of winding down and cosying into bed, I was trying to understand what I had just found.
Mould takes time to grow. It’s presence meant that we had a moisture control issue and that this situation had been brewing for a long time.
It also meant that the floorboards were not salvageable.
Just as I was almost all soured-out, Sugar had been added.
Mould is not a great for young lungs, nor might I add, those with neuro-inflammatory baggage like me.
“It’s actually a blessing.”
My darling wife Raya, as she is prone to do, hit the nail square on the head.
Though I was fatigued and our living room was pure chaos, I became full of gratitude. Nature was not cursing us, it was teaching us.
“Hey kid, you’ve got a problem, and you need to address is, NOW!” I heard the Goddess say.
Lemons? Tick
Sugar? We had just found ours.
What was left to make this situation into Lemonade?
Water.
Urghhh, ironic, ey?
Both the problem, and the solution.
Elementally, water ‘goes with the flow.’ Two bedrooms contain surprisingly large amount of stuff, especially when emptied into-a modest lounge. With a busy schedule and now house, the kids, Ray and me had a choice; fight it and complain (and suffer) or go with the flow.
Humour can be a great gateway into the water element; it is the dimension of light heartedness and connection, but also perseverance.
We were not wading in knee deep water (thankfully.) All it took was 10 cm of water pooled against the side of the building; the gentle pressure quietly exploited every single crack, opening and gap.
Now it was our turn to, as Bruce Lee instructed, to be like water.
Honestly, the more I reflect, the less I feel hard done by; we were warned.
8 years ago when I moved in, I had ripped out mouldy carpet. Even the sections that were not mouldy had me questioning how the previous owners tolerated such mank.
Instead of judging, I could have investigated.
Not to lament the poor choices of the past, in the here and now I was unsure of the path forward; in light of the mould with no visible water I knew for certain any floating floor would likely face the same fate.
“Bedroom Tiles?”
I googled around seeing if this was a thing.
“It’s what we do in Mauritius” Raya added. “because of the issues with mould.”
I had the bosses design approval and we scoured the web for tiles. Frank Walker, though it pains me to admit it, is indeed a marketing genius, 25 years later and has incessant nasal drawl pushed me to you-know-where.
So, here I am, a week later, sitting back, sipping my tasty lemonade, exhausted but deeply appreciative of the mysterious way life teaches us all.
I had ignored the mouldy carpet, and then the growing musty smell at my own peril. How did the universe respond? It escalated.
God sent me a tiny flood not to punish me, but to force my hand. What did I get? The opportunity to wash away a problem that was already brewing and potentially doing damage to the family.
How did my ego take all of this?
“No, but you don’t understand, I’M Busy! Not now!”
How did my body take it?
Muscles I didn’t know existed are currently screaming in their respect for tilers, its truly back breaking work.
How about in the quiet recess of my Soul?
I feel a taste more refreshing than a glass of homemade lemonade on a stinking-hot summer afternoon.
If life has been throwing you lemons, and you need a little hand in making lemonade, the self-cultivation tools we share on our Soul Retreat are the very practices that Raya and I use to face the uncertainties of life. The have been a Godsend in terms of finding the silver lining and in making lemonade. It would be our joy to share these with you.
Click through to learn more about joining our next retreat.
Jai Atmeshwar,
Victory to the Divine Soul
David
