Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that
her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it.
She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one
problem was solved, another one soon followed. Her father, a chef, took her to
the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire.
Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one
pot, eggs in the second pot and ground coffee beans in the third pot. He then
let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter,
moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing. After twenty
minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and
placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. He
then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.
Turning to her, he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs and coffee,” she hastily replied.
“Look closer”, he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did
and noted that they were soft.
He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling
off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma
brought a smile to her face.
“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.
He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee
beans had each faced the same adversity-the boiling water. However, each one
reacted differently. The potato went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but in
boiling water, it became soft and weak. The egg was fragile, with the thin
outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling
water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the ground coffee beans
were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the
water and created something new.
“Which one are you?” he asked his daughter. “When adversity
knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee
bean?”
Moral: In life,
things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly
matters is how you choose to react to it and what you make out of it. Life is
all about leaning, adopting and converting all the struggles that we experience
into something positive.
