When life goes wrong, you may feel like all you want to do is curl up into a ball and cry. You feel broken—like you can’t, or even don’t want to, move forward. Maybe your partner cheated on you, or you lost your job. It feels impossible to imagine that things will ever improve, because right now, everything seems unbearably difficult.
But this simple story might help. It illustrates how to face problems in a healthy and empowering way, showing how we can grow through hardships, failures, and setbacks to become stronger, better people.
One day, a young woman visited her grandmother and told her how overwhelmed she felt. Her husband had cheated on her. According to research from The University of Utah, around 20% to 25% of married men have affairs.
“Gran, I’m at my limit,” she confessed. “I can’t keep going. I feel like everything in my life is falling apart. Just when I manage to fix one issue, another one, ten times worse, shows up. I really can’t do this anymore.”
Her grandmother looked at her, gently wiped her tears, led her into the kitchen, and offered a lesson full of wisdom.
She placed three pots of water on the stove. In the first, she dropped some carrots. In the second, eggs. And in the third, ground coffee beans. Once the pots began to boil, she simply let them sit.
Without exchanging a word, the two women watched the pots bubbling away. After about twenty minutes, the grandmother turned off the heat and carefully removed the contents, placing them into separate bowls.
“What do you see?” the grandmother asked.
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” the granddaughter replied, slightly confused and wondering if her grandmother had lost her sharpness.
“Touch the carrots,” her grandmother said. “Now break the egg. And finally, take a sip of the coffee.”
The granddaughter followed each instruction.
Still puzzled, she asked, “What are you trying to show me?”
Her grandmother smiled. “Sweetheart, each of these items faced the same adversity—boiling water. But they responded very differently.”
“The carrot went in strong and firm, but after being boiled, it turned soft and weak. The egg, fragile on the inside and protected by a thin shell, hardened inside after being boiled. And then there’s the ground coffee—it was unique. Rather than letting the water change it, it changed the water.”
The granddaughter nodded thoughtfully and joked that her seventh-grade science projects hadn’t taught her half as much.
Her grandmother leaned in and asked, “Which one are you?”
“When hardship knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you like the carrot—seemingly tough but growing weak when faced with pain and struggle? Or are you the egg—once soft and open, but becoming hard and bitter inside when challenged by difficulty?”
The granddaughter listened intently, trying to absorb every word.
“Or,” the grandmother continued, “are you like the coffee? The coffee beans transformed the water, the very source of their struggle, into something new and wonderful. If you’re like the coffee, then when life gets hardest, you rise above it. You grow. You change the environment around you instead of letting it change you.”
The young woman hugged her grandmother tightly before heading off to confront her husband.
As she was walking out the door, her grandmother called out gently, “Be the coffee, sweetheart. Always strive to be the coffee.”
True happiness doesn’t come from having a perfect life filled with sunshine and roses. It comes from making the most of what you’re given—no matter what that is.
Here are a few additional insights about love, life, and healing:
Some zodiac signs truly struggle with relationships—and there are reasons why.
Men appreciate the little things women do more than you may think.
Healing a relationship is possible, even from a low point.
Love often hides in the smallest gestures.
The best futures are built not on lingering pain but on letting go of past hurt.
A wise quote once said: You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one. A 2011 study supports this—showing that releasing past pain and accepting reality can actually increase happiness.
So don’t let the bad things break you so much that you forget how to rise again. Learn from what happened. Forgive when you can. And always remember: hardship builds strength, sorrow makes you human, and happiness adds sweetness to your journey.