Nature, Boiling Water, and Catchy Sayings

This is a bit of a continuation of my musing from Wednesday. The latest thing on Facebook that I’m seeing six, seven (thousand) times a day is some sort of picture – ranging from cutesy to inspiring – with the caption: “The same boiling water that hardens the egg, softens the potato. It’s not about the circumstances, but rather what you are made of.”

The take away is meant to say that you can choose to let your circumstances make you bitter and hard or you can choose not to. In other words, it’s all up to you, not the circumstance you’re in. And okay, sure, there’s a tiny bit of validity to that, we do choose our reactions in different circumstances.

BUT – and really, it’s a big one – the egg/potato thing is ridiculous. The nature of eggs and potatoes are completely different. So if it’s really what we’re made of (vs. what we choose), then that really is saying it’s not up to us at all how we react in different circumstances. If I’m just an egg, mostly protein with a hard, calcium-based shell, then it doesn’t matter what I choose. You stick me in boiling water and I get hard. Similarly, if I was born a potato, then boiling water will soften me (and, if you’ve ever left potatoes on the stove too long, you also know that extended durations of boiling water leave potatoes in a dissolved, mushy mess. Not sure that’s actually any better than being hard, if we’re being honest.)

Hardship (the boiling water) is going to come. Do we let it kill us, either by hardening us or reducing us to tasteless pulp? Or do we fall back on a platitude and say, “Oh…I refuse to move through this trial. I must simply be an egg, so of course boiling water makes me hard. It’s out of my control.”

Why not instead remind ourselves that circumstances don’t define us, but they do shape us. And we get to choose how we’re shaped. Do we let the boiling water of life mold us into a person God can use – one who can reach out to others floating in that same pot and say, “Hey, take my hand. I’ve been there, I know it sucks, and I’ll walk with you to the other side.”