Lemons

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

What a stupid thing to say when someone is suffering.

Imagine that. 

Someone's beloved pet dies and someone says, "When life gives you lemons..."

Someone else loses his/her only source of income and someone says, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!"

Tornado, flood, hurricane, fire, pick any of them. Under what circumstances other than disability, would it be appropriate to use that expression? 

The answer is none of them. 

None of them. And not in the case of health issue or disability either. 

Can't use one arm? Hey, when life gives you lemons, make...

Legs don't work any longer? When life gives you lemons...

Constant pain syndrome? When life gives you...

Keep your lemons. 

Keep your lemonade. 

Keep your trite expression that minimizes the damage caused by life's lemons in the first place.

It's okay to be unhappy with acidic life lemons and seek to resolve an unfavorable or corrosive life-event. 

The same goes to any derivative of the expression such as:

-Find a way to be happy. 

Happiness has nothing to do with it. I don't have to be happy about chronic pain.

-Seek your joy.

Have the joy. Thanks. Don't have joy about chronic pain.

And my personal favorite, most loathsome of them all, make the best of it.

While I intellectually understand the sentiments, all of these expressions truly minimize the life-altering nature of unending pain. 

Keep the lemons.

Keep the lemonade.

Keep the trite expressions.

Real help and support look much different than flippantly easy, half-hearted phrases.