Once upon a time a son complained to his mother that his life was miserable and that he didn’t know how he was going to make it. He was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed. His mother, a chef, took him to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire.
Once the three pots began to boil, she placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot and ground coffee beans in the third pot. She then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to her son. The son, moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what she was doing. After twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. She then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.
Turning to her son, she asked. “Son, what do you see?” “Potatoes, eggs and coffee,” he hastily replied.
“Look closer”, she said, “and touch the potatoes.” he did and noted that they were soft.
She then asked him to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, he observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, she asked him to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to his face.
“Mother, what does this mean?” he asked.
She 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?” she asked her son. “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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