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.
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