SHORT STORIES

Life is like a cup of coffee (Story # 1)

By invajy Updated on December 23, 2020

The lessons from this motivational story will help you look at things with a different perspective, lift you up, and make your load a little lighter.

Inspirational and Motivational Short Story # 1– 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 everything 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 for the all of the friends (students of professor) also as some of them were meeting after a long time. Everyone was getting to know the whereabouts and the developments in their friends’ life after leaving college. They shared with each other and inquired about how did they moved ahead in life. Few became strong leaders, having senior positions in corporate world; whereas few were doing well in the business world. All of them had gotten married and had wonderful families. Everyone had his or her own timing of life in achieving the milestones. There was 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 had the same kind of cups due to the large number of guests; his wife has 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 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 professor; they could not understand; what’s the connection with having a coffee in a chosen cup with the stress and tension of life.

The 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 it even 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.”

Always remember one thing, if life is coffee; and jobs, money, status or position in society & love etc. are the cups, they are just tools to hold and contain life. The type of cup we have does not define or change the quality of life we live. Please don’t let the CUPS drive you!! Enjoy the COFFEE!!!

Moral of Motivational Story – Life is like a cup of coffee

Most of the people concentrate only on the cup and fail to enjoy the coffee. We keep our focus on outside beauty and appearance, whereas; the real quality and value lies inside. Savor the coffee and not the cups! The happiest people in this world don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best out of everything.

Sure, a nice looking cup may help make the experience of drinking the coffee interesting. But no cup in the world, no matter how exquisite, can ever compensate for the horrid taste of bad coffee. In fact, it’d be undrinkable. So the coffee inside the cup is more important than the cup itself.

At the end of the day, it is vital to know what does make you happy and what completes you. There is no need to fret too much about how the cup looks like from outside. It is about the quality of its content. And we define what that very content means to us.

Don’t run for money, success, career, status and prized possessions. Always try to live life with full mindfulness. The true meaning of life is not materialistic achievements, but going that extra mile in the journey of life which will enlighten you to the real purpose of it.