06/22/2026
"The difference isn't the shell. The difference is what happened inside." Great lesson on resilience from Grounded Ag!
How Do You Like Your Eggs?
Growing up, sale-barn breakfasts were a level all their own. It's tough to put into words. Maybe it was the cinnamon rolls bigger than the plate, the smell of coffee and bacon, or the politeness of a waitress who called you "honey." For me personally, holy smokes, it was the eggs. I never could figure out how they put so much flavor in them. (Being tall enough to see the griddle in the kitchen as an adult changed my attitude about them a bit. I can see where the "flavor" came from now) But how do you like your eggs? It's a strange question to begin a column with, but stay with me.
Over easy? Scrambled? Sunny side up? Just a little runny?
Personally, I've been thinking a lot about hard-boiled eggs lately. A raw egg and a hard-boiled egg look nearly identical from the outside. Same shell. Same size. Same appearance. Yet they're very different once heat and pressure is applied. Drop a raw egg and it shatters. The shell breaks and everything spills out. Drop a hard-boiled egg and it may crack, but it largely stays intact. The difference isn't the shell. The difference is what happened inside. At some point, the hard-boiled egg was exposed to heat. Not enough to destroy it. Just enough to change it. Agriculture teaches this lesson over and over. Crops face wind. Livestock endure weather. Equipment breaks down and gets repaired. Markets rise and fall. The goal isn't to avoid every challenge. That's impossible. The goal is to develop the capacity to handle challenges when they arrive.
Unfortunately, much of modern life seems designed to remove every discomfort, obstacle, and hardship from our path. We want smooth roads, easy answers, and immediate relief from anything unpleasant. Who can blame us? Difficulty isn't fun. But there is a danger in avoiding every challenge. When we never experience manageable amounts of stress, adversity, disappointment, failure, or discomfort, we never learn that we can survive them. We never build confidence in our ability to adapt. We never discover coping skills. We never learn that hard days eventually end. This doesn't mean we should seek suffering. It doesn't mean tragedy is good. It simply means that growth often happens when we face something difficult and successfully work through it. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as building resilience. In agriculture, we might simply call it callusing. The same way a plant gradually adapts to outdoor conditions, people can gradually adapt to life's challenges. In a certain light, we NEED these challenges to mold us. If we didn't have certain experiences, we'd all be raw eggs bouncing through the world. What a mess! (The same mess I experienced during a recent curbside pickup order, story for another time. Eggs aren't meant for curbside pickup)
Over the years, I've noticed something interesting about resilient people. They aren't people who avoided adversity. They're usually people who encountered adversity and learned they could handle more than they thought. Their shell isn't any thicker than anyone else's.What's different is what happened inside. So I'll ask again. How do you like your eggs? Because life has a funny way of turning up the heat from time to time. And while none of us get to choose every challenge that comes our way, we do get to choose how we respond when it does. If you stayed till the end, over easy please. Bacon on the side.
