Potatoes, Eggs & Coffee Beans⠀

One day, a girl came home really upset.
She sat down and said to her dad,
“I’m tired of everything. Life feels too hard right now. It’s like, as soon as I solve one problem, another one shows up. I don’t know how much more I can take.”
⠀
Her dad, who worked as a cook, didn’t say anything.
Instead, he walked into the kitchen and filled three pots with water.
Then he put all three on the stove.
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The girl sat there watching, confused.
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Once the water started boiling, he placed some potatoes in the first pot, eggs in the second, and coffee beans in the third.
Then he just let them boil.
Still no explanation.
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After a while, he turned off the stove.
He scooped out the potatoes into a bowl, placed the boiled eggs in another, and poured the freshly brewed coffee into a cup.
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Then he looked at his daughter and said,
“What do you see?”
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She rolled her eyes a little.
“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee.”
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“Okay,” he said.
“Now touch the potato.”
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She did. It was soft.
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“Now crack the egg.”
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She broke the shell and saw it was hard on the inside.
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“Now take a sip of the coffee,” he said.
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She tasted it and smiled a little. It smelled really good too.
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Then he said,
“All three of these went through the same boiling water. But each reacted differently.”
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“The potato went in strong, firm, and tough, but the boiling water made it soft and weak.
The egg was delicate, protected by a thin shell, but after it boiled, the inside became hard.
And the coffee beans? They were different.
They didn’t just change themselves, they changed the water around them.”
⠀
He looked at her gently and asked,
“So when life gets tough, how do you respond?
Do you become the potato, the egg, or the coffee bean?”
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Life challenges all of us.
People might test us.
Circumstances won’t always be fair.
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But what really matters is how we respond on the inside.
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Do we break down?
Do we shut off?
Or do we find a way to rise and make something better out of it?
⠀
Because at the end of the day,
it’s not about what happens around us or to us.
It’s about what happens within us.

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