Personal growth, I hope? Like maybe I learned life lessons that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
A lot of the course of my life up to this point has been determined by coincidence or things out of my control. Like, if my mother hadn’t died when I was in high school, I wouldn’t have moved in with other family in another state. Then I wouldn’t have met certain people at certain times who drastically chanced the course of things. One of these was someone I met on a train late at night. I wouldn’t have been on that train at that time if it weren’t for a random chain of events, leading back to her death.
There have been times in the past when I’ve been very, very poor, and pretty lonely and unhappy. The upshot is that now, I understand and appreciate everything I have, whether it’s a positive friendship, a fun afternoon in a new place, or just a nice meal. After hard times, you notice everything, and the tiniest little things make you happy. The other night I was driving along the river, and just the feeling of driving, the night wind, and being the captain of my own ship, made me so happy.
After a certain point, your own decisions have more bearing on your life than the decisions of other people, and you sink or swim on your own merits. That is the best, most freeing feeling. Maybe if my teens and young adulthood hadn’t been so full of crazy ups and downs, I wouldn’t even know what to call that. So I think, in the end, “lemons” give you a set of new eyes; you see the world in a new light.