There is a video circulating the internet this week about a young girl. She sits in her kitchen with her father complaining about her life. She faces challenges in school, struggles to have good friendships, and stresses over her life. While they are minor hurdles, to a young child they can seem massive. Her father sets three pots of water on the stove, all identical, and the water begins to boil. In one, he places a raw potato. In the other, he places a raw egg. In the third, he places whole coffee beans. Twenty minutes later, he removes them all. He takes the potato, and it mashes easily between his hands. He takes the once brittle runny egg and peels it revealing its newly found strength. However when he shows her the coffee, he doesn't remove it from the water. He pours a cup. He looks at his daughter and says, all three of these things faced the exact same adversity. The potato got mushy and weak, the egg became rock hard, but the coffee used its surroundings and adapted to form something new.
We can all learn from the coffee.
When faced with adversity we have a few choices. We can become weak and allow it to overcome us, similar to the potato's reaction. We can become strong and hard and lock out all external forces, like the egg. Or, we can view our surroundings, and adapt to them to make something even better than before. The coffee did not view the boiling water as dangerous, it looked to this water as an ingredient to make itself amazing.
Every time we face a challenge we must not look at it like a threat, we must view it as an essential part of our development into our best self. So today, embrace your challenges and act like coffee.
-Max Feber
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