Potato, egg and coffee beans
A little boy named John lives in a beautiful home with his parents. One day, his father finds him crying and asks if something is wrong. John says meekly, “I have so many problems in life,” and talks about his ‘problems’.
John’s father patiently listens to him. Then he brings a bowl and places a potato, an egg and some coffee beans in it. He asks John to touch and feel the ingredients in the bowl, and tell what he feels about them. John describes how he feels about each of them on touching.
The father smiles and asks John to place them all in three different bowls, and then boils them all and then places all the bowls on the counter to cool them down.
The father asks him to touch them once again and feel the egg, potato, and coffee beans. John has a different answer this time. And he says, the potato’s skin is easier to peel as it has turned very soft, the egg has hardened, and there is a fresh coffee aroma coming from the beans.
Listening to John, his father smiles and tells him how the potato, egg, and coffee beans reacted to adverse situations. The dense potato has become soft, the hard egg turned very stiff, and the coffee beans have changed their form completely during their testing time in the boiling water.
[via oiroegbu]
This story makes me think of the concept of change and the pandemic we're going through. A lot has changed with the pandemic. It feels like by the time all this gets over, the people we’ll be meeting are going to be completely transformed from the ones we met before the pandemic. There's going to be a lot of personality change in the people we know.
Circumstances, especially the obstructing ones change you and so does time. Forcing change, the boiling water represented the hardships and the challenges of life. These challenges are inevitable and are a necessary part of life, everyone is going through them and everyone tackles them in their own special ways. The fact that every object had changed differently demonstrates how different and unique we are.
The people who look stiff from outside like a potato, show their softer side. Some turn powerful inside out like the egg that hardens after being boiled. And others like the coffee beans change the environment they live in.
Change is a scary thing. Telling someone they have changed is usually taken in a negative sense, and rarely as a compliment. Development is change too, it is inevitable. You acquire experience, you learn, you grow!