$10 Lemonade
The past couple of weeks have proven that Georgia’s weather is officially insane. About this time last week, the entire city of Athens (actually, the entire north Georgia area) was frozen over from the “icepocalypse.” My roommates and I were completely iced in. I couldn’t even open my car door because it was so frozen over. It was a rough couple of days full of Netflix and cabin fever.
This past week however has been beautiful. Clear skies and warm weather the whole week long. This past Tuesday was awesome. With my sunglasses on and sleeves rolled up, I spent most of the day outside on a bench enjoying the weather while also being productive and getting a lot of work done. It was absolutely fantastic. Later on in the afternoon, I was on my way back to my apartment after picking up a friend who needed a ride back from a doctor’s appointment. We had the windows down cruising to some good tunes on the nicest day of the semester. We decided to swing by Starbucks for a quick refreshment on such a great day.
It’s never easy finding a parking spot in downtown Athens, but we finally snagged one close to the Starbucks. Within a span of less than 10 minutes, he and I had walked in, ordered our drinks, and were on our way back to my car. I ordered a venti-sized passion tea lemonade- my favorite Starbucks beverage. Cool drink in hand, a productive day, best weather of the year and then… boom. There it was.
Looking at my windshield, I saw an orange slip of paper with the menacing words, “Parking Violation”. Whoops. I had completely forgotten to put a quarter in the parking meter before going inside. “Are you kidding me?”, I said aloud to my friend. “This is ridiculous. I’ve never forgotten to put change in the meter.” Being the squeaky-clean Caleb I thought I was, I got pretty frustrated and was in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
Have you ever had one of those days? All is well, the day has been great, and then you get smacked in the face with disappointment. In retrospect, it’s just a silly parking violation. No big deal, right? The danger is that I allowed it to rob me of my joy for the rest of the day. You may have heard the phrase, “don’t let your circumstances rob you of your joy.” I constantly have to remind myself of that. When we let our circumstances control our joy, we severely limit the positive influence that we can have on others.
Days will never be perfect, and things will not always go the way we had planned. I think in some ways that is a very freeing reality- that we can go live life knowing that ultimately we are not the ones in control. That’s not to say that I plan on paying $10 for lemonade again, but rather seeking to be more intentional in learning from disappointments, instead of letting them control my joy.
