THE story goes like this: A girl approaches her father in the kitchen lamenting about how hard life is in making friends, adjusting to school, and maybe not ever surviving high school.
The father responded by taking a potato, an egg, and coffee beans and placing them in separate pots of boiling water. Afterwards, he took them all and placed them in individual containers.
He asked his daughter what she was seeing and she answered, “Potato, egg, and coffee.”
He further explained that life can be explained by these three things.
A potato started out as hard and unrelenting but when boiled, it became soft and weak.
The egg started out as fragile but when boiled turned solid and tough.
Now, the coffee beans were different. Instead of just being changed by the hot water, they changed the water itself, releasing a wonderful aroma and giving way to coffee.
There are many versions to the start and end of this story but the essence remains. The same adversity of boiling water is introduced to the potato, egg, and coffee beans but they react differently.
The message is: It is not what happens around us or to us that matters. It is our response that determines what we become after the adversity.
The first time I heard this story, I was chanting to myself, “coffee bean, coffee bean, coffee bean.”
But as time goes by and I learn more about myself and life, I realize I’m having another take-away from this potato-egg-coffee beans illustration. I now find it too simple to declare being this one thing.
Reality is, when you undergo something life-changing - a calamity or disaster, a personal or financial crisis, a betrayal, a death of a loved-one – you are plunged into chaotic thoughts and emotions. You feel like you’re drowning and there’s no way you can just float around and think, “Oh, I’m a serene coffee bean melting and transforming the waters around me, hu-hum…” No way!
You thrash around clutching at whatever you can to preserve your life and your sanity. You morph from one hard potato to a mashed, buttery one the next second, crying all day and lying awake at night.
Then you transform again to a century-egg, all black and stiff from holding it together and establishing boundaries that you know you need to endure another day, another hour, another minute.
After going back and forth for some time, like a normal person in an extraordinary circumstance, then maybe, just maybe, you can start entertaining the thought of finally being still. Taking it all in and viewing it from above. You start to see your emotions, thoughts and past actions from a higher place. It begins to look like a movie but now you can feel more in control, sitting in the directorial chair, and with more power to pull out the lessons from the mess that created them.
But it takes stages. It takes time. And we have the right to stages and time.
Because we are human beings and not a potato, egg, or coffee bean, maybe we can accept the truth that when we’re pounded into a mush, it is but natural to feel momentarily weakened, to fall on our knees and weep.
We can embrace our right to rage, toughen up, and build walls when these are the only ways we know how to protect ourselves from further abuse. We cry out and fight to be taken out of being boiled alive lest we become incinerated into bitterness. After all, even with coffee, no one would dare sip it while it’s still too hot.
By being gentler with ourselves and with enough time, faith, and support, maybe we can then create the right balance to finally shed the tears, don a lighter armor, and conquer our adversities. This time, not as an ordinary coffee bean, but a robust Arabica or a “Barako” blend!