It’s story time. Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

One day, a young girl returned home from school. She was very upset about the way her peers had been treating her. She cried and said she never wanted to return to school again, and she wanted her mother to homeschool her.

The mother guided the young girl into the kitchen, where she grabbed three pots and filled them with water. She placed each pot on its own burner on the stove and waited for the water to boil.

As the water in each pot came to a boil, she placed a carrot into one pot, an egg into the second pot, and a large tea bag into the third pot.

Together, the mother and daughter silently watched as each pot boiled the contents within, and, after some minutes, the mother turned off the heat and told her daughter to pay close attention.

She showed her daughter where the boiling water had caused the carrot to go from being hard and rigid to soft and pliable. She showed how the egg had gone into the water as a fragile thing that is easily broken, but boiling water caused it to harden and strengthen. Then she showed her daughter where the large tea bag simply blended with the boiling water and transformed the water into tea.

The mother looked at her daughter and asked her which of the three items she would like to be. The daughter looked at her mother and was silent as she shrugged.

The mother told her daughter that this was simply one of many times that she would encounter a harsh environment — and each time such a thing happens, it is destined to change you in one way or another.

But, she told her daughter, it would be her choice as to which object she would be. Would she allow the harsh environment to make her soft and weak? Would she allow it to make her hard and less fragile? Or would she seek to change her environment by allowing her influence to set in?

The mother told her daughter that, above all, she wished for her daughter to be like the tea. Because we all encounter things we wish to change.

We all face hard times. And some of us respond poorly. Some go through a heartbreak and they become hard and tough. And they make it more difficult for themselves to be in a future relationship. Some people encounter pressure at work, and they allow it to soften them and they then become easily manipulated in multiple areas of life.

This old story has been told and retold for several years, with multiple revisions. I was told that originally the third item was coffee beans instead of tea bags. But the point remains the same. The reason I tell you this story because I find myself speaking with multiple friends of diverse backgrounds, and there seems to be a deep level of discomfort and dissatisfaction across the board — regardless of political sides.

Some people are angry about how people are being treated. Other people are angry about how money is being spent. There is more tension now than any other time I can remember, and so many seem to feel helpless.

It makes me think of that saying: Be the change you want to see in the world.

Be the tea.