Warning: brief language

Once more, thanking brightonbipolar for nominating me for this challenge. It’s been fun!

Day Three

I figured I’d end this challenge with a humorous quote, which I share with you through the magic of typography below.

The quote is from Cave Johnson, one of the characters in Portal 2, a game by Valve Corporation (the guys behind Steam), and voiced by Academy Award-winner J.K. Simmons. In it, Johnson, who founded Aperture Science Laboratories and acts as its CEO, offers a different outlook on what one should do when life gives you lemons.

Johnson is an eccentric, which means he’s strange, but wealthy, and has the entire think tank behind Aperture Science at his disposal. He’s also the “take-no-shit” kind of businessman who isn’t afraid to change his reality with the tools he has. Give me lemons, will you? I’ll turn them into weapons and lob them back at you, life!

There are days I’m capable of doing that. I have the strength and the energy to weaponize the adversity that I’m given on a daily basis through my mental and physical health struggles, and I can take that energy and do amazing things with it. There are other days, though, that it’s all I can do to be appreciative of someone else turning that adversity into a mild-mannered, tasty drink and handing me a glass to sip.

I wish I had more days that I was like Cave Johnson: brash, in-your-face, no-nonsense, get-stuff-done thinking. But those days are fleeting for me and I’m aware of my shortcomings in that area. My mental illnesses often keep me from being so gung-ho about any given situation, and my physical health often tag-teams in to make sure I stay down.

It seems silly to take what’s supposed to be a funny quote and turn it into something deep and thought-provoking. But it is. What if we had the power to take all those struggles that life handed us and figuratively set the world aflame with that fuel? There’d be no stopping what we could do.

So I strive to reach that ideal once in a great while, all the rest of the time quietly sipping my lemonade and lost in thought.

“Soon.”

“I’m going to burn life’s house down. With the lemons.“