Random Thoughts

Cup and coffee

This one is a nice story on handling pressures related to work 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. While it is normal for each of 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. Some times, 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.

Labels: Matters of life

posted by Ranjit @ 4/24/2006 09:57:00 am