Potato, Egg or Coffee Bean — Which one are you?

A daughter complained to her father that she was going through a tough time in her life and she was unsure of how she is going to come out of it. She was constantly surrounded by struggles and something or the other kept coming up which used to strain away all her energy. She was just tired and miserable.

Her father then took her to the kitchen and filled three pots with water and lit them up 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.

After thirty minutes he turned off the fire and took the potato and an egg out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He then poured the coffee out and placed it in a cup. He then asked his daughter — "What do you see?" Irritated she said — "Potatoes, eggs and coffee."

"Look closer," he said, "and touch the potatoes." She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to look at the egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she saw the egg was hard-boiled. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. She smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

"Father, what does this mean?" she asked.

He explained that the potatoes, the eggs and the coffee beans had each been put in the same situation — boiling water. However, each one reacted differently.

The potato went in strong and hard but came out soft and weak. The fragile egg with the thin outer shell came out hard. But the ground coffee beans — they transformed the water entirely into something beautiful.

So which one are you? When adversity knocks on your door — do you become soft like the potato? Do you harden like the egg? Or do you change the very environment around you, like the coffee bean?

I aspire to be the coffee bean. On most days, I am probably somewhere between the potato and the egg. But that aspiration — that is enough to keep going.