Dealing with adversity

Here’s a tale about ways of dealing with adversity that I heard recently.

A young woman complained to her mother about the hardships and difficulties in her life and wanted to give up. Her mother took her to the kitchen and filled three pots with water, placing each on the stove over a high flame. Soon the water came to a boil. In the first pot she had placed carrots, in the second eggs and in the last ground coffee beans. In 20 minutes, she turned off the burners, took the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She placed the eggs in another bowl and ladled the coffee out placing it in a bowl, too.

She asked her daughter to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. Then she asked her daughter to take an egg and break it. After peeling the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she fixed the coffee and asked her daughter to sip it. The daughter smiled as she tasted its richness and asked, "What does it mean, Mother?" Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity, boiling water, and each had reacted differently. The carrot went in hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile, its thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior, but after the boiling water, its inside hardened. But the ground coffee beans were unique; after landing in the boiling water, they'd changed the water itself.

The Message? We can change adversity into a whole new world if we use it as creatively as the coffee did.

http://www.metronirvana.com/