Don’t Let The Cups Drive You, Enjoy The Coffee Instead

Got this email forwarded by a friend. Though I don’t have the details of the university or the lecturer, the story is quite interesting.

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 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 and some expensive and exquisite, telling 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 but 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 position 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.”

So folks, don’t let the cups drive you, enjoy the coffee instead.

This story is very much inspiring. A simple story, conveying a great meaning. How many of us really get this meaning in our life? Everybody seeks beautiful cups. This world respect owners of beautiful and costly cups. People even take unethical paths to get more beautiful cups! There may be one in thousand who seek better coffee, the soul and meaning of the life, and enjoy it. The world seems not recognizng those who seek better coffee, those does not need recognition after all.