When life gives you lemons!
When I wrote this blog entry traffic jam in April 2006, I quoted a saying, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. It was about how something as frustrating as a traffic jam that lasts for hours can turn out to be a source of enjoyment if a person looks at it from a positive point of view.
Earlier in the day (ok its past 12am in India, so yesterday) I was getting a bit frustrated with things for not moving fast enough or for the fact I wasn’t receiving the accolades I thought I deserved. So much so I went back to the drawing board, trying to come up with something that would meet people’s expectations, while loosing focus on what my long term goal was. Hours went by and with every passing hour my frustration grew, not knowing what exactly I was supposed to do, I finally did something fruitful; I switched off my computer and went for a break.
For the next few hours I did nothing but talk to my family, watch some television and eat dinner. At the end of it all, I knew what I had to do, all my worries went for a toss, it was as if I had found a solution to all the problems facing human race.
What was it?
Nothing!
Yes that’s right nothing; I knew I didn’t have to do anything at this moment. There was no need to go back to the drawing board because I had thought every thing well enough in the beginning and there was no need to change the course on such a short notice.
After all criticism were expected and to a certain extent I already knew the issues that had to be dealt with. What I was failing to understand, was the fact that I didn’t needed to address these issues at this crucial juncture, instead I had to keep them in mind for future. There were things which needed immediate attention then the measly details I was getting so worked up about. After all in a book cover is not the only reason people choose it, it is the content which reigns supreme. And this is what I should have been thinking of rather then the cover. Of course having a fancy cover never hurts, but if one spends all his resources and energy in developing the cover than it will prove futile, since there will be hardly any one interested in buying book with a fancy cover with no content.
There were two ways of looking at things at hand, one was the positive way, which went along the lines of making lemonades with the lemons you got and one was throwing away the lemons in hope of finding some thing exotic.
Sadly I choose the second one leading to all the frustrations and time and effort being wasted, when I finally went back to the first view point, things became clearer. After all “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!” 
