Once day a young girl complained to her father that she felt her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was simply put, tired of fighting and struggling through life all the time. It seemed just as one of her problems was solved, another one soon followed and then another.
Her father, a chef, decided to take her into the kitchen. He then filled three pots with water and placed each on a hot fire. Once the three pots had began to boil, he then placed potatoes in one pot. Eggs in the second pot Then he ground a handful of coffee beans and placed the ground beans the third pot.
He then let them sit and boil for some time, without saying a word to his daughter. The young girl, moaned and impatiently waited tapping her foot on the floor glaring at her father. Wondering what he was doing she grew more impatient.
After twenty minutes he extinguished the burners and took the potatoes out of the first pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out next and placed them in a bowl of there own.
He then sieved the coffee out separating the bits of coffee beans and placed the coffee in a cup.
Once done he turned to her and asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she impatiently replied!
“Look closer,” father said, “and go ahead and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were warm and soft to the touch.
He then asked her to take an egg and and crack open the shell. After pulling off the shell, she was left with the hard-boiled egg.
Next, he asked her to take a sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to the young girls face.
“Father, what does this all mean?”
He then began to explain that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity. Each one of them had been subjected to boiling water. However, the potato, egg and coffee beans had each reacted differently.
The potato went in firm, hard, and unrelenting. However after boiling in water for some time, it had become soft and weak.
The egg were fragile, with only a thin outer shell protecting the inner liquid until it was boiled in water. Now the inside of the egg has became hard.
However, he mentioned the ground coffee beans in a way are different. After they were ground and exposed to the boiling water, they had changed the water and created something new.
“Which do you think you are?,” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond Sue? Are you a potato, a egg, or a coffee bean? “
Whats The Moral:
In life, things can happen around us. Things will happen to us. But the only thing that truly matters in life is what happens within us.
#Steemovation short story by
