To be like coffee beans

A father was giving advice to his son, who was about to be married.

“My last piece of advice,” he said, “I want to give you in the kitchen.”

The young man — who knew nothing of kitchens or cooking — timidly agreed.

The father set three pots of the same size on the stove, filled each with water, and lit all three burners.

“Now — you will bring me two of everything I ask for,” he told his son. He asked, in turn, for carrots, for eggs, and for unroasted coffee beans. The son brought him two of each.

The man put the two carrots in the first pot, the two eggs in the second, and the two green coffee beans in the third. He boiled all three for twenty minutes. Then he took the pots off the heat and invited his son to the table.

Three plates were waiting. With great care, he arranged the boiled carrots, the eggs, and the coffee beans onto them. Then he turned to his son and asked:

“What do you see?”

While the son was still thinking, he began to explain:

“The carrots boiled until they lost themselves and went soft. The eggs look as firm as they did at the start, but inside they have hardened. The coffee beans, though, are exactly as they were — whatever they were at the beginning, that is what they are at the end…”

Then came the real advice:

In a marriage, love and tenderness must live together.

In a marriage without love, the two of you wear each other out, use each other up, wilt each other — like these carrots.

In a marriage without tenderness, however much you endure one another, you harden from the inside and drift apart — like these eggs.

But in a marriage with both love and tenderness, whatever the circumstances, you stay at each other’s side without losing who you are — just like these coffee beans. And the way coffee beans stand ready to be brewed again, you stay glad of long years spent side by side.

The son seemed satisfied with the lesson.

“That is not the real lesson!” said the father.

He took his son by the hand and pointed to the water left standing in the pots on the stove:

“Look at what the carrots and the eggs left behind… There is no taste in either.”

Then he slowly poured the water from the coffee pot into a cup. It smelled of wonderful fresh coffee. He held the cup out to his son: “I imagine you’d like to drink this!”

As his son sipped the coffee, he carried on:

A home shared by two people who do not consume each other — like the coffee beans — turns out just like this. Fragrant. Clean, and full of peace.

Like fresh coffee you could pour into anyone’s cup…

Because by never spending each other — by meeting each other with love and with tenderness — they manage to add their own taste, their own scent, their own color to life.