Motivational and inspirational short stories

Life is …like a cup of coffee A group of best friends decided to have their alumni get together at the residence of one of their favorite university professors. The professor was very popular among university students and had been a mentor for many of them. They finalized to make a surprise visit to the professor. All planning was done and on a predefined date, they visited their most popular and old university professor’s house. It was quite a happy moment for not only the professor; but even for the all friends (students of the professor) also as some of them were meeting after a long time.

Everyone was trying to know the whereabouts and the developments in their friends life after leaving college. They shared with each other, how did they move ahead in life. Few became a good leaders having senior positions in the corporate world; whereas few were doing good in the business world. All of them had gotten married and having wonderful families. Everyone had his/her own timing of life in achieving the milestones. There was a quality conversation going on, but somehow the conversation soon diverted to complaints about work, relationships, ‘stress‘ & ‘tension’ in life.

The professor offered them coffee and went to the kitchen to ask his wife to prepare coffee for all his students. After 10-15 minutes, his beautiful wife came with a pleasant smile. One thing was to be noticed that she brought coffee in different kinds of cups !!! (crystal cups, glass cups, ceramic cups, shining ones, some plain looking, some ordinary, some exquisite and some expensive ones …). The students thought that the professor may not have the same kind of cups and due to a large number of guests; his wife served the coffee in different cups.

When all of them had a cup in hand, The professor said, “If you noticed, all the nice looking & expensive cups are taken up, leaving behind the ordinary, plain, and cheap ones !!!” It was a surprising moment, as nobody noticed that there were some extra cups of coffee and while having their cup, nobody took the ordinary cups and all of them were left on the serving tray. The professor continued, “Every one of you wanted the best CUPS. While it is, of course, normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that can also be the source of much of your dissatisfaction, problems and stress, and tension in life.”

All the friends got confused and were looking towards the professor; they could not understand; what’s the connection between having a coffee in a chosen cup with the STRESS and TENSION of life. Professor continued further and explained after seeing their curious face, “Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it is just more expensive; and in some cases, even it hides what we drink. What you really wanted was COFFEE, not the CUP! But you consciously went for the best cups… and then you began eyeing each other’s cups.”