Here is a nice anecdote I received which tries to explain the reasons for stress.

A group of working adults got together to visit their University lecturer. The lecturer was happy to see them. 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 fill up their cups with Tea or coffee from the decanters.

When all the students had a cup in hand, 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 we wanted was tea, not the cup, but we unconsciously went for the better cups."

"Just like in life, if Life is Tea, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold/maintain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change." Good tea may taste better in a good cup but a good cup does not make for better tea.

"If we only concentrate on the cup, we won't have time to enjoy/taste the Tea in it." It is important to concentrate on what we want rather than bother with the associated paraphernalia and give ourselves needless stress when we either fall behind on the real life goals because of running after trifles or worse still be stressed because we could not pick up all the trifles we wanted.

The picture shows stress of another kind...