A group of friends who hadn't met each other for well over 20 years got together to visit their old university professor who was due to retire within a matter of weeks. The day started off pleasantly enough with the normal teasing and chit chat that one would expect from such a gathering. Before too long though; the conversation had inevitably turned in to complaints about the pressure and disappointments of work and life in general.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of freshly brewed coffee and an eclectic assortment of cups. Porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive and others not, before telling them all to help themselves to the coffee and biscuits he kindly laid before them.

After a time, content that everyone was already sipping on a delicious cup of coffee, the professor politely observed: "Isn't it strange how we are all drinking coffee from a pretty or expensive looking coffee cup? None of us have chosen a chipped or plain looking cup. Not that I mind, it's only natural to want the best from life, but therein lies the source of all your pressure and disappointments in life." "As such, now might be as good a time as any to remind ourselves that it's the quality of the coffee that matters most, not the cup."

His bemused students listened intently as he went on: "The cups themselves don't actually do anything to make the coffee taste better. Most of the time you're just spending a lot of money unnecessarily on cups that you're buying simply to impress the people around you. Something which became evident by the manner in which you all tried to grab what you thought was the prettiest or most expensive cup to drink your coffee from just now." "As you did" he went on, "You all began eyeing the cups of the people around you with either a look of satisfaction or distain in your eyes."

"Now, consider this: Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and position you hold in society are the cups. They are merely tools to hold and contain life; and the type of cup we have does not define nor change the quality of life we live or, more importantly, the person we are inside."

"Alas though, when we concentrate on the coffee, rather than the cup, we fail to fully appreciate or in fact enjoy to the full the delicious coffee God has kindly brewed for us all in equal measure." God brews the coffee, not the cups . . . enjoy your coffee for oftentimes when we complain that we do not get what we deserve from life, we've simply neglected to appreciate how truly fortunate we actually are."