Recently, I read a little book called The Coffee Bean. It's an illustrated fable, and its premise has stayed with me.
The story asks what happens when a carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean are placed into boiling water. Each responds to the same difficult environment in a different way.
The coffee bean does something different.
It changes the water around it.
I just love that idea.
Not because I think we're supposed to walk through life determined to change everything around us. We can't, and sometimes we shouldn't.
But we do have our own little corner of the world.
A conversation.
A kitchen table.
A workplace.
A friendship.
A stranger's difficult day.
And sometimes, without making much noise at all, we can change the little bit of water we're sitting in.
Maybe that's what I like most about the coffee bean.
You can be affected by the world without allowing it to define you.
And perhaps, in ways you never see, you can leave a little of yourself behind in the lives you touch, too.
Some ideas are worth keeping simply because they make you see ordinary things a little differently.