Enjoy Your Coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stressing 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 the coffee.

After 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’s normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that’s the source of yoru problems and stress. Be assured that in most cases the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee, just more expense, and in some cases it even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and then began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee: the jobs, the money and the position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life. The type of cup we have does not define nor change the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.”

God brews the coffee, not the cups.