Damon West

He said, now anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot.

He said, I'm going to put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change.

A carrot.

An egg and a coffee bean.

So here's where I first heard the story of the coffee bean.

Mick, it was the summer of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County Jail.

10 years before John Gordon and I write that bestselling book in 2019 called The Coffee Bean.

So he said, first things first, West.

If I put a carrot in that pot of boiling water, he said, what happened to the carrot?

I'm like, the carrot's going to turn soft, Muhammad.

He said this right, Wes.

He said the carrot goes in the water really hard and firm, but the water, the prison, turned the hard carrot soft and mushy and weak.

You don't want to be a carrot.

What about the egg, Wes?

What happens to the egg in the pot of warm water?

I'm like, the egg is going to turn hard, Muhammad, like a hard-boiled egg.

He said, that's right, Wes.

He said, the egg has a shell that can protect it physically on the outside, but inside that shell, that soft liquid core, the yolk, the heart becomes hardened.

He said, now, if your heart becomes hardened, you become incapable of giving or receiving love.

He said, if you're incapable of giving or receiving love in the world you're going into, you don't come back as someone your parents recognize.