A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old University lecturer. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain looking, some expensive and some exquisite. He told them to help themselves to hot coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other’s cups.”
“Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money, and positions in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, but the quality of life doesn’t change.”
“Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.”
