Hello everyone!
I hope you're all well.
I just want to let you know that I took over day 17 from @Kimberly136 (from Greenville, SC). This morning I was reading a very inspirational story of which I thought was worth sharing with you.
Once upon a time, a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot, and ground coffee beans in the third pot.
He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing.
After twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl.
He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup. Turning to her he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she hastily replied.
“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.
“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.
He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity– the boiling water.
However, each one reacted differently.
The potato went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak.
The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.
However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.
“Which are you,” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean? “
Moral: In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.
Which one are you?
@Quincy, that’s nice of you to keep the calendar going and even with a calendar story. My grandma always had calendars with a story or cooking recipe per day. I probably became a cynic reading them ...
Small wonder the daughter is not good at managing her life, with such a chef as father.
The potatoe may be edible after 20 minutes, depending on size, the egg is a rubber ball by then and I don’t believe there will be any coffee, as he did not ground the beans first. Anyway, after 20 minutes boiling, I would not taste it for any incentive 😉
Writing on inedible food, I looked up and saw that sight: Auguste had found the teabag in the bin, but fallen asleep with eyes open still holding it. Not even the flash startled him.
And he does not produce eggs, it’s definitely a male bird.
I guess, in the original question, you may not find many exclusively passively suffering victims here, they would not survive the guests for long.
A possible reaction to the harsh hosting environment is getting harder, sometimes hard and even hostile in a burnout. And to get out of that, a creative period, to transform the environment, make it nicer for the guests or contain them somewhat. It seems to come in waves for most of us.
