By Henrylito D. Tacio

WHAT'S your morning perk-upper? Mine is coffee. The word "coffee" may have been derived from the Ethiopian "keffa" or the Turkish equivalent word "qahveh." The Arabs call the beverage "qahwa," which means "strength."

The coffee's use as a drink spread through Arabia in the 13th century and it became popular in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the Philippines, coffee was brought by the Spanish friars in 1740. Since then, the Filipinos have become coffee drinkers.

Coffee is one of the main sources of caffeine. The US Food and Drug Administration classified caffeine as "generally recognized as safe."

For years the public was warned of the dangers of coffee. In one well-publicized "New England Journal of Medicine" study released in 1981, researchers found a link between coffee and pancreatic cancer. But when at least seven other studies failed to back up that finding, those results had to be retracted.

Now, more than 19,000 dietary caffeine studies have been done, and many experts agree that moderate daily caffeine intake - 300 to 400 milligrams, about three to four cups of coffee - is not harmful.

Some researches have shown that regular, moderate drinking does not dangerously raise blood pressure. And studies have failed to substantiate fears that coffee might trigger abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) in healthy people.

Until recently, there is no conclusive evidence that caffeine or coffee is a risk factor for the development of human cancer. In 1990, the International Agency for Research on Cancer held a monograph on "Coffee, Caffeine, Tea & Mat," the latter being a beverage unique to South American countries. The purpose of this monograph was to assess whether these beverages should be classified as being cancer causing (carcinogenic).

Coffee was cleared in all areas with the exception of bladder cancer where there was insufficient evidence available at that time, though several studies have since been published that clearly show no link between coffee consumption and bladder cancer.

Thousands of research projects have been carried out to investigate any links between coffee consumption and the development of cancer in the human body. In 1997, the World Cancer Research Fund published a comprehensive review of diet and cancer. In regard to coffee it stated that, "Most evidence suggests that regular coffee consumption of coffee and/or tea has no significant relationship with the risk of cancer at any site."

You may be wondering why I am writing something about coffee. The reason is simple: Chris Brown, my co-editor of the book, In Search of Excellence: Exemplary Forest Management in Asia and the Pacific, sent me a "nice story" that "might work into one of your columns one day."

Below is the story, but I have tried to modify it: A week before their college graduation, seven friends went to the office of their professor and talked with him. "Sir," one of them said, "is it possible if eight years from now we will meet in your house and have a reunion?"

The professor answered affirmatively. Several years passed and the seven friends became very successful in their chosen fields. Jonathan is now heading his own business firm in Makati, Philippines. Rudy is a highly respected forester working in a UN agency in Rome, Italy. Gary has a flourishing career as a consultant in Bangkok, Thailand. Anselmo is a renowned physician in Cebu City, Philippines.

The three others - Carlos, Rodel, and James - are all engineers working in other parts of the world: Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Canada, respectively.

Eight years later, all seven got together at their professor's house. Talk, talk, talk, and more talk.

Soon, conversation 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, some plain looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the seven friends 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. It is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves. And 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 better cups and are eyeing each other's cups."

The professor continued: "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. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

J. Richard Sneed reminds: "Life is currently described in one of four ways: as a journey, as a battle, as a pilgrimage, and as a race. Select your own metaphor, but the finishing necessity is all the same. For if life is a journey, it must be completed. If life is a battle, it must be finished. If life is a pilgrimage, it must be concluded. And if it is a race, it must be won."

ooOoo