When Life Offers you Lemons.....

As we grow older and become more self aware, we begin to develop dreams and expectations of our own that we set for ourselves( some of the expectations are set for us by society). We set goals to make our dreams reality. In our minds, we have a clear picture of what  we intend to achieve in a particular amount of  years and where we see ourselves at a particular position in those years’ time. For some, it would be to get a particular grade in a subject; for some other person, it could be done with a particular learning program at a particular age etc . The interesting thing about these goals we set for ourselves is that they are ever-changing and we are always making them consciously and semiconsciously. When I was in primary school, I remember my goal in life at that period in time was to always take the first position in class. Actually, to be more precise, the goal was to always get called out to receive a prize on the prize-giving day. Those were easier times indeed. In secondary school, the goal was to always do very well in several subjects so as to have a very high average score. One time, I set a goal to get 90% in Mathematics. I never got it..lol but I never failed the subject as difficult as i found it. 

Then, I remember saying to myself that by so-so age, I will be done with school, buy a car, build a house and get married and have kids. For some reason, That seemed to be the picture of success for most of us growing up.Better put, it is like as young as we were, we were socially conditioned to think making it in life meant having a house, car and a family.  Having all that meant that you had made it in life and anything short of that meant you are still on your way there. Knowing what I know now, making it in life is more of a function of what you as an  individual really wants to make out of life and not a social condition. At the end, all that we want is to be happy, so whatever makes you the happiest is what one should go for and not society's definition of happy. The point being that our orientation on the certain goals we set for ourselves changes as we get to know better. Personally, I wish  I set many  different goals for myself when I was much younger. 

One thing worthy of note when we set goals is that  they can be affected by a lot of factors that are beyond our control. Goals we intend to achieve at a particular period in time can take much longer to achieve or due to an unexpected event that occurs, the goals can become unattainable. For instance, in my case, I expect to be done with school by a particular time in the month but due to the government 's refusal to fulfil his part in an agreement she made with the university staff in 2009, I will be spending more time than usual in school. That would mean all I intend to achieve at a particular period may take longer to achieve than usual and it’s sad. 

But such is life a lot of times. Life can be unfair and things that we do not deserve can happen to us. A lot of times it can seem as though things are designed to completely disrupt the trajectory of our lives and completely stop us from reaching our goals. What we can do is accept that it is not the end; try to make the best out of the worst situation and not allow anything to leave us down for a very long time. 

When life gives us lemons, make lemonade.