| Have you ever been sitting around having a
conversation with someone, seemingly going well, talking about how
everyone is a little nutty, or how most people ultimately compromise
their values for no good reason but selfishness, or how they seem
completely willing to judge others but rarely take a good look at
themselves, or how they constantly say one thing but seem to mean
another, or how modern business is structured on exploitation and
environmental unsustainability, or how morality is meaningless in the
workplace, or how every boss you ever had tried to
lean on you psychologically, or how the service in some restaurant or
other sucked, or how people are manipulative bastards, or how
religion/the school system/rock and roll/the government/the institution
of marriage/television/radio/the middle east/everything is being
corrupted, and then—right in the middle of the seemingly pleasant
conversation—your friend has the nerve to point to a glass on the
table and ask whether you see that glass as half full or half empty?
And, so, you look at the glass, and 9/10ths of the time the you want to say that the correct answer was not offered as an option.
So you try to explain to them that they aren't being clever, and it's not as though no one's ever made the half-full, half-empty comment to you before. And you really can't claim to care whether your attitude is pessimistic or optimistic, but you're pretty sure you would never seriously use psychobabble like that on a friend, and that you're hoping they're joking. And then you explain to them that it's really an irrelevant question, that the glass is where it is, and they're really just making an example of the shortcomings of language. Then you tell them you see the glass as being about 1/3 full or 2/3 empty, or 7/8ths or 5/16ths or whatever it happens to be, and then they have the nerve to say, "But, yeah, let's say it really was exactly in the middle."
So you go on to ask them why the glass has to be "half full" or "half empty"? Why can't it just be "halfway" or "at half"? And you tell 'em it isn't as though it would make any difference in any practical situation. If they ordered a beer or a coke or a juice, and the waiter brought a cup filled like the one above, they'd be pretty pissed off to pay full price for it. If they were really thirsty and all they had was a 12 oz. glass filled halfway, then they'd know they didn't have enough in front of them. And if that happened in the desert, it'd be pretty goddamn irrelevant whether they thought their canteen to be half-full or half-empty if they didn't have enough water to live. And then your friend says something like, "Yeah, I was kinda thinkin' you were one of them half-empty types." |
