Carrot, Egg and Coffee =)

 

 

Every once and a while you come across a story that changes your perspective on everything. For that reason, the Carrots, Eggs, or Coffee story has to be one of my favorites. A young woman is filled with despair and hopelessness after her husband of five years had just dumped her, and she was tired of the way she was feeling. So she goes and visits her grandmother, and that's when grandma teaches her a valuable lesson she'll never forget.

The grandmother asks “Carrots, Eggs or Coffee: Which are you?” The young woman looks puzzled. Grandmother leads her into the kitchen and puts 3 pots on the stove, set to boil. In the first pot she places a few carrots. In the second pot an egg. In the third pot, ground coffee beans. They sat quietly until the pots boiled, then turned the flames off. Her grandmother fished out the carrots and placed them in the first bowl, the egg was placed into another bowl and in the third bowl the coffee was ladled. The grandmother points to the bowls and asks her granddaughter “What do you see?” She blinks and says “Carrots, an egg and some coffee.”

 

 

“Come closer,” she tells the young girl. “Feel them.” First, the carrots had become soft to the touch. Next they inspected the egg, which the grandmother cracked open to reveal a firm, hardened interior. Then she handed her the coffee to sip. “What’s the point?” the girl asked. The wise grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity—boiling water—but each reacted differently. The carrots went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However after being subjected to the boiling water, they softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its delicate shell had protected it. But, after sitting in the boiling water, its inside had hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water into something wonderful.

 

“Which are you?” she asked her granddaughter again. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”