“Ah”, some of you might think, “he’s
one of those half empty people.” These people will generally be self-described
glass half full people; the optimistic go-getters that see every problem as a
challenge, like the woman who said during an unexpected lay-over in of Turkey’s
most depressing airports: “Great, now we get to discover this place!”. But they
are wrong. Well, mostly wrong.
First of all, I don't like this question
because of its binary options. The poser is assuming everybody falls in either one
of the two categories. It is a bit like asking: “Are you a Catholic or Protestant?”,
which assumes everybody is a Christian. Or “Are you a cat or dog person?”, like
those are mutually exclusive and some people like neither.
The obvious missing answer is “It is
50% filled”, which is at least is a somewhat accurate observation, instead of
an opinion. (Technically, unless the half-filled glass is in a vacuum, it is
always filled 100%, just not with liquid.) I’d like to call the people who choose this option realists.
But most of all, I don't like this question
because it doesn’t consider context. The question forces you to form an opinion
without all the facts. We’re not told what the glass is filled with, why it was
filled or why it may be emptied? These things matter.
Let’s say we stick to the two original choices. Now
we fill an empty glass to 50%. I would then argue this glass is half full. Now we
fill it to ‘full’, which is never 100%
filled to the brim (unless you order a drink in the UK), and then drink it back down to 50%. I’d now argue the glass
is half empty. That has nothing to do with optimism or negativity, but to do with the
logical progression of the contents of the glass.
If the glass is filled with poison or piss, is it still considered optimistic to call it half full?
If the glass is filled with poison or piss, is it still considered optimistic to call it half full?
I understand the appeal of this
question. For the asker it gives them a rough insight into your personality.
But as a realist, I don’t like to be excluded from consideration. The overt
simplicity of its premise makes me judge the asker as intellectually lazy. I
guess when it comes to this dilemma, it’d say I’m more a glass half empty guy.
