A Fabulous Analogy...... cup of coffee anyone?

AK - Jeff

http://myriadhues.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/coffee-cup-analogy/

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 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.”

So please, don’t let the cups drive you…enjoy the coffee instead.

Being happy does not mean everything is perfect. It means you have decided to see beyond the imperfection.

Open mind

Thanks Jeff for an excellent Pre-Thanksgiving post.

om

pirata

Awesome analogy!

3Mozzies

I love it, that was an excellent analogy Jeff!

3Mozzies

bobld

The WBTS always talks about the cups they don't give a s3#$T about one's coffee.

B

Satanus

Very good.

S

tec

Wise lecturer. I enjoyed the analogy. Thanks Jeff.

Tammy

pirata

The advice to keep your eye simple is a good one.

Simplifying your life allows you to focus on what's really important to you instead of having all this clutter preventing you from doing what you really want to do.

Satanus

Could liken the cups to all the different lives of all the different people on the planet. Each has the same life essence content. Not sure if that works for the materialists. Anyways, it tends to put everyone closer to the same level. Heck, you could put animals closer to human level, as well.

S

Scully

That's excellent, Jeff.

It reminds me of a similar "parable" that one of my nursing profs told our class:

She had a large vase made of clear glass set on the table at the front of the room. There was also a box of big rocks. One by one, she started placing the rocks inside the vase, and it looked like the vase was pretty full.

But then she had another jar full of smaller stones, and she put those in and jiggled the vase a bit and the smaller stones sort of fit their way into the spaces between the big rocks. The vase still looked like it was full, even though there was obviously more in it than before.

Then she had a big jar full of sand. And she poured it in over the big rocks and small stones and the sand filtered into the spaces between the rocks and the stones. Surely, there wasn't room left for anything else. Right?

Then she started talking about how the vase had a certain amount of "stuff" it could hold. Just like our days have only 24 hours, we make room for the big stuff: our job, our partner, our children, our extended family. Then we find room for the things we want to do: hobbies, outings, concerts, date nights, etc. And then we still find more room for stuff that has to get done, stuff that's never going to end: cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, shovelling the snow, mowing the lawn, and so on. Sometimes it seems like there's never time for anything else.

That's when she pulled out two cups of coffee and poured them over all the rocks and stones and sand in the vase... and it didn't overflow.

Then she said: "You can always find time for a couple of cups of coffee between friends."

A Fabulous Analogy...... cup of coffee anyone?

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