Once there was a farmer who went out to the yard to collect eggs from her chickens, as she did every day. But on this day, she found a giant egg in her yard in addition to the usual bounty of normal eggs. This giant egg was taller than the farmer herself, nearly as tall as her house. She’d never seen anything like it, and she was pretty sure no one else had either.
She went into town to see if anyone might know what kind of egg it was or what to do about it. Word about her egg spread quickly, and “eggsperts” from far and wide to came to see it and offer their opinion. These eggsperts gave her all kinds of opinions on what kind of egg is it, why it’s there, how to cook it, and more. Some said the shell was too hard to crack, and others debated the ethics of eating eggs. Some people worried that it’s a dinosaur that would eat us all, while others calculated its impact on the local egg markets. Everyone seemed to make good points, but the farmer wasn’t sure what to make of it all.
More and more people came to discuss the egg over the coming days until normal life in the village nearly stopped altogether. The mayor called a town hall meeting to decide what should be done about the egg, but of course no one agreed with anyone else, and the meeting went well into the night and began again in the morning. It seemed like the meeting would go on forever.
As some point, the farmer snuck out the back of the town hall meeting. No one noticed her absence, which was good. She went home, got out a hammer, and began trying to crack open the egg.
Eggs-trapolating Meaning
What happened next depends on you.
Did the farmer learn useful information about the egg and how to deal with it and any potential future giant eggs? Was she unable to crack open the egg? Did she succeed in cracking open the egg, and if so, what did she do next? Did the contents spill all over the ground or spoil? Did she sell its contents and make a small fortune? Did she make hundreds of omelets and donate them to feed the poor? Did she kill the last dinosaur, rendering them extinct? Did she save everyone from the last dinosaur? Did she anger the egg’s mother and father, bringing even greater disaster to the village? Did she change her mind, return to the town hall meeting, and comply with the consensus of her community? Did she parlay her notoriety to become the next mayor of the village?
Were her actions admirable or reprehensible? What’s the right thing for her to have done? What would you have done? How would you like to see this story end? What does that say about you? How does this story relate to modern life, if at all? Does the egg represent the COVID-19 pandemic, the quarantine, the recession, some problem in your life, or something else altogether? What does this story mean, or does it mean nothing at all?
Why did you answer these questions the way you did? What can we learn about ourselves and others from reading this story and answering these questions? How can we approach the stories of our own lives differently? Do we need to keep telling old stories and living our new stories in the same way? What would happen if we didn’t?