COFFEE AND LIFE
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got
together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon
turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his
guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with
a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain,
plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some
exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all
the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If
you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up,
leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. 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 best cups and were 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, don't let the cups drive you... enjoy the coffee
instead.
Kathy d'Aran-Banton
