The carrot, the egg and the coffee

I am reading a new self-help book on the Kindle, a device that I thought I'd never use - but is permanently by my side (no distractions as all you can do is read on it).

One section, a couple of paragraphs leaped out at me in particular with an analogy I'd never heard or read about, concerning a carrot, an egg and coffee.

This is it and it's similar to the boiling frog extended metaphor.

A carrot is hard on the outside, an egg is fragile, coffee (ground or granular) is soluble.

This perhaps apocryphal narrative goes like this:

Three pans are placed on a hob, with a carrot, egg and coffee in each and boiling water is added. Each has the heat turned up.

The carrot loses hardness and comes out soft; the egg loses softness and comes out hard; the coffee dissolves.

Obvious, perhaps.

But what we have to do with our personal lives, our professional lives is the same - we don't move from soft to hard, from hard to soft, awaiting a Scrooge-like awakening.

We need to dissolve negative thoughts, banish negative actions and live more in the present, creating habits that change us to be more like the coffee - dissolving others' opinions, not hardening or softening values that we live and work by.

You don't ever see carrot or boiled egg shops on every street; people don't walk round with either in their hand. You do with coffee.

And although the dissolving of coffee may be tenuous in terms of life, I do believe that we all need to be more like it to live well, staying true to our principles and work; and not being too hard on yourself or others - or too soft, but dissolving or accepting and moving forward.

The metaphor struck me like the oft-told frog one (where two live frogs are put in a pot and the one put in boiling water leaps out, whilst the other doesn't realise it's having the heat turned up until it's too late).

I love having nice coffee about four times a day, I rarely get the urge for a carrot or egg, unless it's Easter.

I need more coffee this week to absorb the umpteen new work that has landed - instead of delaying any longer with perhaps pseudo-profound articles like this, I need to focus on those this weekend and next week, absorbing the many satisfactions from doing these well.

Being a starter and a finisher.