Squeeze a lemon, and it will produce a juice, too harsh to be palatable. But it forms the basis for lemonade, the world's oldest refreshing drink. Like a lemon, life is full of sour things. It is full of challenges, hardships, pain and suffering. But in all this is hidden the seeds of greatest achievements, happiness and success. Life at times can even be cruel, but that is what makes it worth living.

We become happy as we fight sorrow. We become wealthy as we struggle to remove poverty. We develop intimate relationships as we overcome loneliness. We produce light as we fight the darkness. In other words we produce positive in our endeavors to remove negative.

Life will hand you a lemon. Bigger it is; more sour it is, tastier and more of lemonade you can make with it. Bigger the suffering, bigger is the blessing; bigger the challenge, bigger is the reward. Big people made it big because they had bigger lemon in their lives. If they didn't have theirs, they take others. Mahatma Gandhi, was a lawyer, and could have made a great career at it. But his sensitivity towards inequality and injustice made him what he was. Life handed him his lemon the day he was thrown out of the first class compartment of the train for having the wrong skin color. Would Gandhi be Gandhi we know if there was no injustice and India would not have been a ruled by exploitative British imperialists. What Mother Teresa would have done, if there was no illness and pain on the streets? Would Helen Keller rise to the heights she did, if she was not blind? The list can go on and on.

Your life is full of big problems? It has sorrows too hard to describe? You are facing hardships that you do not even want your enemies to face? Congratulations..... You have the lemon to make the lemonade. God has given you these not without reason. It is in these hard times that we grow towards our potential. So thank God for it. It is during these trying moments when you rise and keep rising, till you achieve greatness. No one is born great, but it is his challenges, pain and misery that force him to become great.

You may rightly argue that if pain and hardships are required for success, then why there are so many who are still homeless and poor. Why so many people are castigated to a life of loneliness. Why people live an entire life in misery and ultimately die a miserable and obscure death.

It is simple; this is the way they want to be. They accept that lemon is a sour fruit and nothing can be done about it. The pain and misery in their life though apparent to others does not seem to hurt them. You are not suffering if you are not feeling the hurt. It is only when you feel the hurt, that you do something to remove it. And in the process you become a hero.

A lemon does not turn into lemonade all by its own. Someone has to press it to squeeze out the juice, and then add water and stir in sugar. It requires the thirst and the desire that prompts you to take action. It needs faith, that it can be done. To get the perfect lemonade, it requires careful planning and execution. And it requires patience perseverance till the sugar dissolves. And the important part, you have to make it your self. You open a bottle of readymade lemonade; it is the manufacturer who earns the money (pun intended).

So, are you ready to make your lemonade........?