The Carrot, Egg and Coffee Parable

The Carrot, the Egg, and Coffee

The carrot, the egg and coffee grounds were to face adversity in the form of boiling water for a specified time period. The carrot before facing the adversity of the water, was strong, vibrant, and colourful. That was its basic nature. After facing and trying to resist the adversity of the boiling water the carrot came out, dull, soft, limp. Its basic nature had been changed, but the adversity of the water remained undaunted and clearly the victor.

The egg before being beset with the adversity of the boiling water seemed symmetrical, whole, and complete in its hard shell protecting its inner liquid nature, its real self. Upon facing the adversity of the water the egg also tried to resist. The boiling water was unrelenting. The adversity was too much. The symmetry of the outer shell was now easily cracked, easily broken. What it attempted to protect had become hard, different, no longer fluid and liquid. Its basic nature had been altered by adversity.

Yet the boiling water remained undaunted, still the adversary, still the victor, still unchanged.

The coffee went in to the boiling water but something was now different. Instead of attempting to resist or avoid the water, the coffee embraced it. By embracing the water and its adversity something interesting happened. The nature of the coffee indeed changed. But it was enhanced. The coffee by embracing the adversity became something greater than it was, and for the first time, it was the boiling water that changed from being embraced rather than resisted.

The adversity of the water became part of the new form of what coffee, had “transformed” into. The coffee, unlike the carrot or the egg, embraced the adversity and by so doing, altered the adversity itself, to a more complete version of itself.

The coffee was improved by not only facing the adversity of the water, but by embracing it!

There are so many life lessons to this parable. I should think most are obvious.
H/T to Scott Abel