Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?
This rhetorical question is familiar to all of us. Its message is that we do best when we conduct our daily lives with a philosophy of contentment. Be happy over the good fortune and enjoyments that come your way, while at the same time overlooking as much as possible the curve balls that life throws you.
The philosophy of contentment is not a blindly Pollyannic view that everything is rosy. Rather, it is a measurement of the pleasant against the not-so-pleasant, with the perception that the pleasant outweighs the distasteful and the decision to celebrate that finding.
There is indeed much merit in the view that the glass is half full, in the ability to rejoice over life’s gifts rather than to forever bewail the defects and aggravations inherent in living.
Your loving wife leaves the cap off the toothpaste. You think about how gentle she is when you come home after a hard day. You never tell her you find the bathroom sink messy and unhygienic.
Your city has an excellent after-school care program. The city also prohibits nude dancers in any club except those which do not serve alcohol; you cannot see why lack of liquor renders watching naked women dance any less immoral. You keep quiet.
You consider the United States to be a rich, free and beautiful country which has afforded you the opportunity to carve out a decent life for yourself. You don’t quite agree with all of our nation’s foreign policies. But the leaders of such a great country must know what they are doing, and you support them.
When push comes to shove, the view that the glass is half full is a view that upholds the status quo. This troubles me. The attempt to change conditions comes at a high price. The attempt requires hard work, at the risk of social ostracism and perhaps physical danger. If you tell your wife that the messy sink drives you crazy, she may retaliate with a withdrawal of emotional nourishment. If you work to get nude dancing outlawed, you may become known as the neighborhood prude. If you protest a popular war, you may well get killed.
The view that the glass is half full can easily lull us into the belief that everything is really all right, that such hassles are unnecessary and even a sign of ingratitude.
To me society is like a small child whom I love dearly. With the proper attention and care, a child constantly changes, developing into a more and more competent person. Without the right care, the child is irrevocable damaged.
The child does not always like the good care. A trip to the pediatrician for inoculations brings kicks and screams. The denial of candy ushers in a pouting sulk. Yet it would be a perverse parental love which dictated “Tommy doesn’t like injections; I’ll keep him at home for an afternoon of lollipops.”
Like the child, society, as often as not, balks at reform. Indeed, it seems to have a perpetual case of the terrible twos. The history of society’s stubborn resistance to constructive change can be traced through the need, by those whose goal is the improvement of society, to resort to protest marches, non-violent demonstrations, and even armed struggle.
To work for social reform requires steadfast faith in the goodness of human beings and the belief that, if shown the way, they will ultimately choose good over evil, justice over injustice, decency over cruelty. Guided by this spirit of optimistic love, the work can be done with a sense of joy and fellowship, despite the arduousness of the task.
Is the glass half empty or half full? I suggest that if we view the glass as half full, we just may perish from thirst, whereas the view that the glass is half empty may urge us to work to fill the glass to the brim, ensuring us a long and progressive life.
Prudy Sutherland
Christmas 1991