Life and Lemonade Stands

As the saying goes, "When life gives you lemons..."

How many of us make or have made lemonade (and I don't mean from packets of <insert brand here>)? One of the hallmarks of youth here in good 'ol Americana was the roadside lemonade stand. That heady mix of water, lemon juice, and (sometimes) sugar design to slake the thirst of anyone willing to part with an extraordinary amount of cash for a good cause.

Most of the time, you'd receive a cup of refreshment, perfectly balanced in sweet and sour proportions because, with incredible amounts of foresight, a mother would catch, taste, and fix it before it ended up on the curb. However, sometimes...well, let's just say you ended up with a cup of liquid floor cleaner, something that tasted like it would strip paint and the desire of living from any soul who dared to drink it.

These are snapshots of a life that for many of us, doesn't quite exist anymore. I was surprised last week week to see a couple of enterprising lads on the dusty sidewalk near my mother's house hawking their wares for $1 a cup. It just doesn't happen like it used to, though.

Today, our "Main Street" is social media, our "lemonade" is any number of posts, our payment is "likes" or "dislikes." We've traded the analog for digital, the experience for fake internet points, our souls for cheap thrills.

I always come away from posts like this feeling like the penultimate Luddite: not quite "get off my lawn" but also not quite the "embracer of all things." At its heart is this very real fear that we're giving away those experiences, those moments, those things that have been so interwoven with our social development and experience and trading them for the Judas' bag of silver.

Somewhere between the eventual digital society we're creating and the here and now, we need the touchpoints of history. We're heading full-tilt into a future that is exciting, to be sure, and full of the promise of easing our burdens, healing the sick, and a galaxy of new insights. But while we're speeding away, we're also creating deeper divides, more polarization, greater disparities between the haves and the have nots, between the marginalised and the mainstream. We've swapped out the roadside lemonade stands for influencers hawking cosmetics, playgrounds for e-sports, and...you get my point, hopefully.

As with everything, we have the opportunity to course-correct, to gently alter with a poke and prod, the course of our lives. With our ferocious velocity, all it takes is a gentle collision, a lemon thrown in the juicer if you will, to set a different course. Are you willing to set up shop on Main Street and offer an opportunity of experience?

Something to think about on this hot and muggy Saturday as you walk about your garden, your community, your people. And, if you come across some lemons, figurative or real, make some lemonade and enjoin that experience we used to have as kids.

May it ever be so.