Hot Chocolate

 I am not a fan of email forwards.  Who is?  They are often cheesy at best and threatening at worst ("If you don't resend this to 10 people...").  When my mom first signed up for email, she for some reason thought that we all wanted to watch slideshows of cute puppies and read jokes likely first published in Readers Digest. After some online etiquette advice and threats of blocking her emails, she hasn't really sent as many.

There was one email she forwarded to me that I have saved though. It is a story that was packaged in a powerpoint presentation, but the moral at the end is one that I always want to remember, and that I want to share with you! .

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired.  During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives.  Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups - porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.  

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said:  "Notice that all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken, 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.  The cup that you're drinking from adds nothing to the quality of hot chocolate.  In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.  What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups.  And then you began eyeing each other's cups.  

"Now consider this:  Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups.  They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have.  Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us.  God makes the hot chocolate, man chooses the cups.  The happiest people don't have the best of everything.  They just make the best of everything that they have.  Live simply.  Love generously.  Care deeply.  Speak kindly.  And enjoy your hot chocolate!"