Be The Bean

 

Be the Bean

This is our slightly embellished version of an old parable. The original has been told countless ways over the years, but we thought the carrot, the egg, and the coffee bean deserved names—and maybe a little personality.

Meet Carl the Carrot, Eddie the Egg, and Benny the Coffee Bean.

Three very different characters. Three very different ways of handling the same problem.

And one pot of boiling water.

The water, of course, represents adversity. The stuff none of us orders but somehow keeps getting delivered anyway.

A bad day. A lost customer. A difficult boss. An unexpected bill. A relationship problem. A flat tire five minutes before you’re supposed to be somewhere. Maybe even a Monday morning that has somehow become aggressively Monday.

Sooner or later, everybody ends up in the pot.

The question is what happens once you’re there.

Carl the Carrot

Carl entered the water feeling pretty confident.

He was strong. Firm. Difficult to bend. You could drop him on the counter and he’d probably bounce.

“I can handle this,” Carl thought.

But the water kept boiling.

And eventually Carl changed.

The thing that had once been strong became soft. What looked tough on the outside couldn’t withstand the heat forever.

That’s one route adversity can take us.

Life applies enough pressure and we surrender to it. We lose some of our confidence. Maybe we stop trying. Maybe something that once seemed possible suddenly seems too difficult.

Carl didn’t choose to become soft.

He simply let the water determine what he became.

Eddie the Egg

Eddie had the opposite problem.

On the outside, Eddie seemed fragile.

One good smack against the counter and everybody knew what would happen.

But inside was something soft and delicate.

Then Eddie went into the same boiling water as Carl.

Same temperature.

Same pressure.

Same adversity.

Except Eddie didn’t become softer.

He became hard.

Sometimes people do that too.

We get hurt, disappointed, embarrassed, betrayed, rejected, or knocked around enough times and decide we’re never letting that happen again.

So we toughen up.

We become skeptical.

We stop trusting.

The shell might look exactly the same, but something inside has changed.

Eddie survived the boiling water.

But the water still changed Eddie.

Then There’s Benny

Benny the Coffee Bean looked at this whole situation differently.

Benny went into exactly the same boiling water.

And yes, the heat affected him.

But Benny did something neither Carl nor Eddie managed to do.

He changed the water.

The water changed color.

It developed an aroma.

It developed flavor.

What started as a pot of plain boiling water became coffee.

Benny didn’t simply withstand his surroundings.

He transformed them.

And that’s the third route.

Be the Bean

None of us gets to control everything that happens around us.

Sometimes the water is going to boil.

That’s life.

But we do have some say in what happens next.

We can be the carrot and allow adversity to weaken us.

We can be the egg and allow adversity to harden us.

Or we can be the bean.

We can bring something into the situation that wasn’t there before.

A little optimism.

A better idea.

A sense of humor.

Some kindness.

A solution.

A fresh perspective.

Maybe simply enough determination to keep moving.

Being the bean doesn’t mean pretending everything is wonderful. It doesn’t mean adversity doesn’t hurt or that difficult things magically become easy.

It means refusing to give the circumstances complete control over what happens next.

Because sometimes you can’t change the temperature.

But you can still change the water.

So Tomorrow Morning…

When you’re standing in the kitchen waiting for that first cup to brew, take a second and look at those coffee beans.

They’re accomplishing quite a bit for something that fits between two fingers.

Heat them up.

Grind them down.

Dump boiling water all over them.

And somehow they respond by making the entire situation better.

That’s not a bad way to approach a day.

So when life turns up the heat…

Don’t go soft like Carl.

Don’t let it harden you like Eddie.

Be Benny.

Be the Bean.

And preferably, be a freshly roasted one. ☕️

— Mine Your Business Coffee
Fuel Your Growth.