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."