James, 41

Life is hard, and it will shape you. But it is up to you to decide what that looks like.

When I was a young boy, I lived with my grandmother. We were very poor. About a mile down the road from our home, there was a dairy. Since we didn’t have money for milk, my grandmother would walk to the dairy from time to time and ask for some. The owner was kind enough to give her milk that had reached its expiration date. One morning, I got up for breakfast and she poured some of that milk over my cereal. As it settled, I saw chunks of curdled milk floating on top. I threw a fit. I refused to eat. My poor, exhausted grandmother walked to the stove and set a pot of water to boil. Then she sat me down and placed three items in front of me: a potato, an egg, and a handful of coffee beans. She asked, “What do you see?” I said, “A potato, an egg, and coffee beans.” She pointed to the pot of boiling water. “That boiling water represents life,” she said. “It’s something we all have to go through.” She placed the potato, the egg, and the coffee beans into the water. After a few minutes, she pulled them out and placed them in front of me. A soft potato, a hard-boiled egg, and a cup of coffee. She asked again, “What do you see?” I replied, “A potato, an egg, and a cup of coffee.” She looked at me and said, “In life, we all have to decide what kind of person we want to be. Do you want to be like the potato, which went in hard and came out soft? Do you want to be like the egg, which went in soft and came out hard? Or do you want to be like the coffee beans? They went in as one thing and came out transformed, fragrant, rich, and full of flavor.” Life is hard, and it will shape you. But it is up to you to decide what that looks like.