Carrots, Eggs, or Coffee: Which are You?

Carrots, eggs, or coffee, which are you? I love this analogy of personal strength and adversary by an unknown author:

A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.
Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil without saying a word.
In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, “Tell me what do you see?”
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” the granddaughter replied.
The grandmother brought the girl closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they got soft. The grandmother then asked her granddaughter to take an egg and break it.
After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.
Finally, the grandmother asked her granddaughter to sip the coffee. The granddaughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma. She then asked. “What’s the point, Grandmother?”
The grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity–boiling water–but each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.
The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they changed the water.
“Which are you?” grandmother asked granddaughter, “carrots, eggs or coffee? When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?”
Are you the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, you wilt and become soft and lose your strength?
Are you the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did you have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, you become hardened and stiff?
Does your shell look the same, but on the inside you are bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?
Or are you like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.
author unknown