Game Theory and a Cup of Coffee

This is an article from the BLOG of VINOD MISHRA…. Cup or Coffee.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: 'If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other ' s cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn ' t change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.'

Don ' t let the cups drive you.. Enjoy the coffee instead

Some Additional Thoughts

After reading the article I was reminded of the theory from the famous personality ( Nobel Laureate ) Sir John Nash with his great Contribution to GAME THEORY, in which he clearly mentions that it is not necessary that everyone in the team should perform his/her 100% to get the best result, but instead we can perform less but still the net result of the team should be higher. So in Life it is not necessary to have all the best things to enjoy the best but since the motive in the above example was to enjoy Coffee, so the selection of the Cup is immaterial.

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