Friday, September 08, 2006

Life and Stress

I’ve been rambling about stress lately and just in time I got this forwarded mail that made me realized a lot of things and brought me back on the track. Here it is…

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. The 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, and 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 is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it's just more expensive and in some cases 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, and the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and 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. Enjoy your coffee.

See?!!! Indeed, it is very true. We tend to focus our attention, time and efforts on our career and work performance, on earning more money and being ahead of everyone else that we don’t know we are missing the most essential of all…living a LIFE, enjoying it and sharing it with everybody. We should relish every moment of our life because surely when we are old and gray and looking back to our years behind, what will matter most is how we lived our life and enjoyed God’s creations.

Stop…and smell the flowers!!!

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