One day a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable nothing ever worked out for her and she didn't know how she would survive. She was tired of fighting and struggling and the world being so unfair to her all the time. It always seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.
Her father took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each one on a burner on the stove..
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 sat at the kitchen table and let them 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 another bowl. He
then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.
“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.
Turning to her, he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs and coffee,” she hastily replied very annoyed at her father.
“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noticed that they were soft.
He then asked her to take an egg and peel 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.
He then explained that the potatoes, eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity - 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 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 of the story:
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 the lessons you take away from those situations. Life is all about learning, adopting and converting all the struggles that we experience into something positive.
