Life's Lemons

Ten years ago, I realized I knew a lot of people who had trouble dealing with change in their lives. I would get asked over and over, "What do you do when bad things happen, or disappointing things, unexpected and difficult things?" People wanted strategies for handling challenges in their lives.

I had grown up hearing the old adage, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade," which pretty much sums up the attitude of the ancient stoic philosophers toward the problem, but in my childhood no one who repeated these words also explained how to do it. How do you turn lemons into lemonade? So I got to work, reading all the great thinkers on the topic, and writing my own book of advice. It was called "Lemonade!" Then I changed the name to "Lemons to Lemonade" and after 24 total re-writes, it became "Plato's Lemonade Stand: Stirring Change into Something Great." Previous versions have been turned down by publishers 45 times, because they're not convinced that a practical book about the personal alchemy needed to turn something sour into something sweet will sell. I'm convinced they're wrong. And whenever I've done the ideas on retreats, people have insisted on having the book available. No one has seen the newest version yet. And I really, really like it. But I'm prepared for more lemonade making before someone in the world of publishing says, "Wait. People need this."

In the Sunday Business Section of the New York Times, Adam Bryant had a very interesting interview with the fashion designer and design mogul Diane von Furstenberg. Let me give you one Q&A:

Q. You’ve said many times that your mother was your biggest influence. What are the most important lessons you learned from her?

A. My mother was a Holocaust survivor and, having survived 13 months in the concentration camps, she taught me that fear is not an option. And no matter what happens, never be a victim. Life is a journey, and when you face obstacles the only thing you can do is accept them and embrace the reality. Very often, with things that are bad or not what you wanted, it’s your job to turn them into something positive.

I love the sentiment about accepting obstacles. Maybe the things that block your path can be taken up and assembled into just the bridge you need. That last sentence of the answer says it all:

Very often, with things that are bad or not what you wanted, it’s your job to turn them into something positive.

That's one of the enduring themes of the practical philosophers. And it's become something I believe deeply. So, when you face your next challenge, difficulty, or disappointment, get out a paring knife, some sugar, ample ice, and whatever additional spices you think you'll like, and make from the lemons that confront you some world class lemonade. Plato would have wanted it.

Stoic Joy. Natural Joy.

In preparation for a trip across the country not long ago, I did something I rarely do: I took one of my own books along to read. It was The Stoic Art of Living: Inner Resilience and Outer Results. It was published ten years ago, and I had not re read it since the early days after it first appeared on bookstore shelves. I tried to approach it objectively, as I would any book. And I have to admit that I really enjoyed it! I had forgotten various little discoveries I had made when I first wrote the original draft of the book, going back almost twenty years. The top three Roman stoics, the slave Epictetus, the prominent lawyer Seneca, and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius had great and practical insights about life that can tremendously enhance our experience of the world today. Their wisdom, at its best, will never go out of style.

The stoics had many perspectives that can help us. Inner resilience is the best path for outer results. Things are not often what they seem. Most of our difficulties come not from the world, but from how we think about things in the world. Nothing can truly harm a good person. By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives. Nothing is to be feared. And I could go on. But, to me, perhaps chief among their insights was the claim that joy is our natural state.

Think about that for a second. Joy is our natural state. If any stoic philosopher was right in thinking this, then either you are experiencing joy right now, or there is some unnatural, unnecessary obstacle in your life blocking that joy, and it's an obstacle you can remove.

If you are, right now, in a state of joy, congratulations. If you aren't, then you should be asking yourself what's getting in the way. What's blocking you from the state of mind that should be your natural default setting? The possibilities are many. And you can't do anything about the ones operative in your life right now until you can identify them. The stoics were confident that, whatever the obstacles might be, you can eliminate them through controlling your emotions, and in turn, you can do that by controlling your thoughts. It's just that simple.

The stoics were philosophers who wanted to help us peel back the worry and anger, the suffering and agitation, the distraction and confusion that too often rules our lives, and get back to the natural state of joy. When we experience that natural joy, we flow forward with all the power that we're meant to have in this life. And that's the power, in the deepest sense, of love.

What's keeping us from it?

A Happy Life

What is happiness? What makes for a happy life? Go to any big bookstore, and you'll find lots of authors tackling the question. Ring all those books up at the register and you'll likely end up very unhappy at the total.

The roman lawyer and stoic thinker Seneca once wrote: "A happy life is one in harmony with its own nature."

An unhappy person is out of step with herself.  A happy person experiences a large measure of inner harmony.  She lives in accordance with her own highest nature.

In his strange film Zelig, Woody Allen long ago masterfully caricatured the chamelion-like tendency that many people have to fit in. We dress in the right style and eat at the right places, drive the appropriate cars, talk in the lingo of those around us, and do as we’re expected to do, all in a misplaced search for happiness. The only reliable formula, Seneca believed, is to live and act in harmony with your own best nature. He believed, first, that there is a universal human nature that should be respected in all that we do.  But he also wanted each of us to be true to who we uniquely are, at our potential best - with our own talents and abilities honed in a way that's right for us, but also put into service to others.

Where are the tensions in your life? If you take an inventory of your own obstacles to happiness, I think it's likely that you’ll find places where you aren’t being true enough to your deepest and highest nature. The good news is, you can make the changes you need to make to live and act in a way that is more natural for who you are and distinctively can be. It is, after all, your nature. Embrace it and work with it. That's the path to happiness, according to the philosopher.