when i was a kid i used to respond to the "glass half full/half empty" question by asking how the liquid in the glass got there in the first place. nobody ever gave me a chance to explain my reasoning so i'm doing it now
if you have a glass and it has some liquid in it, up to the halfway line, whether it is empty or full depends on what happened before the question was asked. if you started with a full glass and poured half out until only half remained, the glass is half empty, because if you continued pouring it would be fully empty. however, if you started with an empty glass and poured liquid from another container into the glass up to the halfway line, the glass is half full because if you continued pouring it would be all the way full. logical, no?
i was 13 years old when somebody finally told me it was supposed to be some kind of optimism/pessimism thing. i always thought it was a riddle that nobody let me solve
Okay but that actually goes really well with the metaphor. How did you get to where you are right now? Have things gotten better or worse? Does it seem like the trend is continuing?
Nobody's really an optimist or pessimist all the time, your outlook depends on the situation and how you arrived there.
OP I need you to understand you were not wrong. You are smart. Please please please understand that fact and I hope that you still keep your thinking style. There's just simply not enough people on this planet who can look at a question like this and think "well obviously you're only asking half the question". You're right and I hope you keep it up
To make OP's point more concise:
"Is the glass half empty or half full?"
"That depends. Are you emptying the glass, or filling it?"
