When Life Gives You Lemons...

Hanging out with friends as an eleven-year-old, I went into the kitchen and came back with a lemon and salt shaker. After slicing it neatly it half, I showered it with salt and devoured one of the halves in a couple minutes. This particular lemon was plump, sour and delicious. 

To my surprise, both my friends looked horrified.
"Why... why would you do that?" one of them stammered. The other gave me a look that said: You're weird.

I suddenly got the awful sensation of being "different". I had assumed that eating lemons as a snack was perfectly normal; after all, my sister did it too! 

After they left, I shoved the uneaten half into a bag and shoved it in the fridge. From time to time, I would jostle by it as I reached for milk or butter. I would stare at the lemon... and it would stare right back. I wanted to douse that sucker with salt and spices and devour it. But I resisted... I didn't want to be that weird guy who ate lemons. I didn't want to be different.

And so I let the lemon, once so vibrantly yellow and bursting with juice, shrivel and brown until my mom threw it away.

As the weeks, months and years passed, I stopped eating lemons altogether. Once in a while I would get a craving and cave in, bicycling to the grocery store and later guiltily eating a lemon alone in my bedroom. At restaurants, I would sometimes try to chew on the cut-up lime they give you along with your drink. But to be honest, a lime is too sharp and bitter to be eaten raw. It really is a sad excuse for a fruit.

But soon I had a surprising experience that changed my attitude toward lemons forever. After high school, I flew to India to volunteer for a few months. Sitting in the living room of one of the locals, I was surrounded by a sea of brown faces eager to see the videshi or "foreigner". Then, to my great surprise, a young boy walked in bearing two gigantic, juicy lemons the size of soccer balls.

This picture would be perfect if it wasn't for the girl.

So this is what lemons are like in India, I thought. My host cut up one of those mammoth specimens and served me several lemon slices in a bowl, along with a packet of masala (Indian spice). I showered them with the spice and squeezed the salty-sour juice into my mouth; raw and delicious. It felt great to be alive.

Flying back to Canada, I couldn't help but ask myself: Why did I deprive myself of this pleasure for so many years? 

We change ourselves all too easily to fit in with the expectations of others, especially as kids. While it's natural to seek acceptance, sometimes those expectations don't make any sense and we end up losing a precious part of ourselves. Beyond citrus fruits, this could extend to major life decisions. It could be a boy who, despite his love and talent for painting, trades in his brushes for dumbbells because his father thinks that painting isn't manly. Or a woman who rejects friends from outside her ethnicity because of the closemindedness of her own cultural tradition. 

Fortunately, we have the ability as (young) adults to consciously be our genuine selves, but it may take a long time for us to recognize that. In my gap year, I would weightlift for at least an hour a day and down protein shakes like they were candy. Eventually I realized that I was subconsciously doing this to seek others' approval, as if there were a correlation between muscle mass and worthiness as a person.

Now I spend most of that time reading great books and writing (this blog included). Sure, I'll miss the bulging muscles (*ahem*) but living out my genuine interests has made life far more fulfilling. Whether it's choosing what you study, who you love or how you worship (or what citrus fruits you eat), basing your decisions on authentic passion rather than programmed fears opens up life in countless new ways.