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 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.”
Don’t let the cups drive you… enjoy the coffee.
Cy said,
October 12, 2006 at 12:52 am
I have never heard this story before. Whether it is apochryphal or not, and whether there is such an individual lecturer or not, it is most useful.
I am (it hardly needs saying) one of the decent chaps of this world. I take the squashed packet off the shop shelf, thinking of the shop owner, not other customers. I wonder if I qualify?
Of course, without the pushy ratbags who take the best cup and create industries, there would be no jobs for us easy-going guys. My lowliest job was loo cleaning (London Heathrow Arrivals) and the best Telephone Operator (GPO Brum 1962-1964, Stirling & Plymouth 1973-1974). I hope there were some mugs. Cups are a bore.
The only job I ever really wanted was dictator of planet Earth. No palace. Cheap mugs.
cyquick.wordpress.com
hsczp9 said,
October 18, 2006 at 11:34 am
interesting…thats typical though, just to be different, id take the cheap cup…