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 learning, adopting and converting all the struggles that we
experience into something positive.
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