Potatoes, eggs and coffee beans

One day my daughter came to my father and started complaining about how unhappy she was.

She said she didn’t know how to live or what to do. She was tired of fighting to survive all the time. It seemed to her that as soon as she solved one problem in her place, the next one would immediately arise.

The girl’s father was a chef. He took her to the kitchen. He took three buckets, filled them with water and set them on fire. As soon as the water boiled, he threw potatoes into one ladle, into the second egg, and the third ground coffee bean.

While the food was boiling, the cook’s daughter was nervous and could not understand why her father was doing it. But her father waited silently.

Twenty minutes later, he took the buckets off the fire. He took the potatoes out of the bucket and put them in a bowl. Then he took out the egg and put it in the bowl, too.

Then he took the cup and poured the coffee into it. The father turned to his daughter and asked: “What do you see?”

“Potatoes, an egg, and coffee,” the irritated one answered.

Then he said, “Look closely and touch the potatoes.” That’s what she did. Then the father asked his daughter to take the egg and break it. When she took off her shell, the girl saw that the egg was cooked. Finally, the father asked his daughter to take a sip of coffee. The incredibly rich aroma made her smile shine.

She turned to her father: “Dad, but what does all this mean?”

Then my father replied: “Potatoes, eggs and coffee beans, all faced the same disaster – boiling water. However, each product behaved in its own way.”

The potatoes were hard and strong, but the boiling water made them soft.

The egg was fragile, only the shell protected its contents. And when it got into the boiling water, it became hard.

But with coffee beans, it was different. After they were placed in boiling water, they changed it and the water became different.

The father asked his daughter: “And who are you? When trouble happens in your life, how do you react? Like potatoes, like an egg, like coffee beans?”

Everything happens in life, but what matters is what happens inside us and what we end up like.

And who are you?