This One’s Optimistic (Or, Half-Full of It)
There’s one image to have staked the claim as the litmus test of optimists and pessimists everywhere: the glass with some liquid in it.
As if your answer to the demand to describe the glass sums up your entire personality.
Let’s go back a second: What the hell kind of question is this to be asking in the first place? Say Donnie asks, “Hey Joe, is this glass half-full or half-empty?” How boring is Donnie? Nothing else to talk about? The Grammys were on last night, not even those? Valentine’s plans? If Joe were at all socially normalized he would answer with a snide question of his own, e.g. “Why in hell do you care?” or in the declarative, “You have no life of which to speak.”
Now, you might be saying, “It’s just a hypothetical question, Dan. It may have some theoretical use.” I don’t care if it’s hypothetical; those questions are only useful when they involve possible real-life situations. I’ve never been seriously asked this half-full, half-empty question. If I were, I would take the glass and toss the water in the asker’s face, and say, “Fuck you, now it’s empty. I’m a nihilist, and you’re a dick.”
In conversation about this (who has no life?), I’ve heard some good faux-responses. My friend Jesse said he once answered diplomatic-like, “The level of the liquid is at the glass’ midpoint.” I once asked my roommate if the quantum physicist conceives of the glass as half-empty and half-full at the same time. He responded, “I think it’s a third state: Half empty-full.”
I think the question itself is just too reductive. I say that it doesn’t illustrate a person’s optimism or pessimism, but rather his or her realism. So what if I think it’s half-empty? Is that really pessimistic? Let’s say an athlete tears a ligament in the knee. He may say, “This sucks,” but that’s not being pessimistic; he knows he’ll miss some games. Maybe that idea saddens him. Maybe his injury hurts. That’s realistic. It’d be pessimistic of him to think that the world hates him because he got hurt, or that things are slowly getting worse for him. That’s pessimism to me – not whether things are bad, but rather the expectation that things will stay bad, or the fear that they will get worse.
“The glass is half-empty.” Yeah? Maybe someone is in the middle of drinking it, and he is taking a little break. Is replenishment sad news? Hardly. It’s a biological necessity. “The glass is half-full.” This man is an idealist whose view is that the world isn’t good as it is, and can only see it in terms of what it is not. That’s not altogether positive.
Besides, with an open mind, one sees that the glass is never empty, that it’s always completely full – of liquid, and air. How’s that for optimism?
1 Comment »
February 14th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
I never thought of that. It’s brilliant. I can’t believe I fell for that half-empty, half-full crap. Liqiud AND air. That makes TOTAL sense. Can I use it?