Water In The Cup

A group of working adults got together to visit their University lecturer. The lecturer was happy to see them, and conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
The lecturer just smiled and went to the kitchen to get an assortment of cups - some porcelain, some in plastic, some in glass, some plain looking and some looked rather expensive and exquisite. The lecturer offered his former students the cups to get drinks for themselves.
When all the students had a cup in hand with water, the lecturer spoke, "If you noticed, all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal that you only want the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you wanted was water, not the cup, but unconsciously went for the better cups."
Just like in life, if Life is Water, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. If we only concentrate on the cup, we won't have any time to enjoy the water in it.

- Claimed to be from various places, I obtained this story from a Reader's Digest collection of inspirational stories, titled "Life is a travel"