A daughter complained to her father about how her life was so hard and she did not how she was going to make it. It seemed as soon as one problem was solved a new one arose.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He put three pots of water on the stove. As soon as the water came to a boil, he put carrots in one, eggs in another and ground coffee beans in the third.
The daughter wondered what he was doing. Twenty minutes later he poured the water of the cooked carrots and eggs, putting them in two separate bowls. He ladled coffee into a mug.
He turned to his daughter and asked what she saw.
"Cooked Carrots, hardboiled eggs,and coffee", she replied.
He told her to feel the carrots. She did, noting they were soft, He then asked her to break an egg. She took off the shell and found a hardboiled egg. Finally, he asked her to sip some coffee, which she did, tasting the rich aroma.
She asked. "What's your point?"
He explained that each of the foodstuffs faced the same adversity, boiling water, but each reacted differently. The carrot went into boiling water strong, hard and came out softened and weak. The fragile egg's thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. After the ground coffee beans were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.
Which are you," he asked his daughter. "Are you a carrot that wilts, becomes soft, loses its strength when faced with adversity. Are you an egg, which starts off malleable, fluid, but after a after a death, a breakup, a divorce, or a layoff have you become hardened and stiff. Your shell looks the same, but you become bitter and tough. Or are you like the coffee bean that doesn't succumb to the hot water but changes it and becomes better.
And so I discover another way I don't want to go, death by boiling |
