Are you a potato, egg, or cup of coffee?
And no, I’m not asking about your favorite breakfast food – that question is actually an assessment of how you face adversity.
There’s an old story about a daughter who complains to her father. She tells him how difficult life is and how many struggles she’s facing. She isn’t sure if she can take much more. Her father hears her and silently goes into his kitchen. He fills three pots with water and waits for them to boil. Once they’re boiling, he places a potato in one, an egg in another, and ground coffee beans in the last.
He sits in silence as the three boil and cook.
After twenty minutes, he takes the potato and egg out and places them into two bowls. He then ladles the coffee into a mug. He sets them in front of his daughter and asks her what she sees.
“A potato, an egg, and coffee,” she replies, not understanding the point.
He tells her to look closer. When she does, she sees that the once hard potato is now soft and mushy. She sees the once fragile and frail egg is now hard. And she smells the coffee, smiling at the comforting scent it brings.
“But what does this mean?” she asks her father, still confused.
The food represents the three ways people face adversities. The boiling water is the trouble and challenges we all face in life. The potato – once strong, hard, and difficult to break – became soft and weak after some time in the boiling water. The egg was fragile and weak before but turned hard after boiling. But the coffee grounds were different. They transformed and adapted into something completely new during their time in the pot.
The girl’s father looks at her and asks the simple question, “Which are you? When adversity knocks, how do you respond?”
Which Are You?
This allegory is so powerful. The truth is that trouble will always be there. We will constantly get knocked down, life will always be unpredictable, and we might reach our breaking point sometimes. That’s why we need to learn to deal with troubles in the healthiest way.
The potato represents people who attack every problem that comes their way. They are fighters and doers but, sometimes, the challenges are too much for them to handle and they break and grow weak. These are often the people who believe themselves to be strong and unbreakable, but when that illusion is cracked, they find themselves faced with the reality that, at the end of the day, they’re only human.
The egg represents those who let challenges break them down. They are the ones who have been molded by the strife they’ve faced in life and have grown hardened to the world around them. They no longer believe that the world is for them – instead, it’s a cruel place that people should be wary of.
Finally, the coffee represents the people who know they will never be free from trouble and embrace it. They adapt and grow with every trial they face. They see adversity as something that can grow them, but not define them.
Your response to problems in this life will make or break you.
While I’m sure we’d all like to be the cup of coffee and adapt to every problem life throws our way, I think there is a bit of potato and egg in all of us (especially if you’ve just had breakfast – anybody else hungry?).
No one will ever be perfect at facing their problems. That’s why they’re called challenges — they challenge who we really are. There will be some issues that arise that force us to go into it with a hard exterior. Other problems will come that require soft and tender help.
But instead of attaching ourselves to having a hard spirit or a fragile state of mind, we should learn to adapt and grow into any problem we meet. One of the best ways to handle the conflicts, problems, and worries of life that often arise is to understand that you won’t be broken by them if you choose to grow from them. If something is difficult, see what you can learn from it and where you can grow from it.
Be the cup of coffee whenever you can. Understand that nothing you face will break you if you adapt and grow from it. Celebrate the problems you face and allow them to grow you, not destroy you.
Are you a potato, egg, or cup of coffee? Comment below!
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