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Roasted coffee beans Español: Granos de café tostado (natural). Bahasa Indonesia: Biji kopi alami yang telah disangrai. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
STRUGGLES OF OUR LIFE
Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was
miserable and that she didn't know how she was going to make it. Sh
e was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with
water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil,
he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot and ground coffee
beans in the third pot. He then let them sit and boil, without saying a
word to his daughter.
The daughter, moaned and impatiently waited,
wondering what he was doing. After twenty minutes he turned off the
burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl.
He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. He then ladled the
coffee out and placed it in a cup.
Turning to her, he asked.
“Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs and coffee,”
she hastily replied.
“Look closer”,
he said,
“and touch the potatoes.”
She did and noted that they were soft.
He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.
“Father, what does this mean?”
she asked.
He 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?”
he asked his daughter.
“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 and 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 learning, adopting and
converting all the struggles that we experience into something
positive.