The Cup And The Coffee

A Group of friends, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress of work and life. The professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

As all the students had a cup of coffee in hand - some smiling, some not - the professor 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 also the source of problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive... What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups…and then began to envy each other’s cups.
Now consider this: “Life is the COFFEE; the jobs, money and position in the society are the CUPS. They are just tools to hold and contain 'life', and the type of job we have neither defines nor changes the quality of life in itself. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee. God brews the coffee, not the cups."

NOTE: The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.