Half Empty or Half Full?

Is the glass half empty or half full? I get asked this question a lot (probably because of my penchant for personality tests!), and every time, it annoys me. It's a stupid way of obliquely asking whether I'm an optimist or a pessimist. Pessimist, obviously, from my reaction! But I'd tell you that without having to dance my way around an old, tired, confusing metaphor that (metaphorically, and ironically) doesn't hold water!

From the first time I heard about "the glass" being "half empty" or "half full" as a measure of one's baseline level of negativity, I found it confusing. I'm guessing I was a pre-teen at the time, so I was still firmly into concrete thinking, and here's what I thought:

Why did it have to be one or the other? Halfway is halfway—it's exactly in the middle. It is both half-empty and half-full at the same time. You could use either term and still be correct! Is this some kind of Zen koan? (No, I did not think that thought at my pre-teen age, but I do now.) Why are you trying to make me decide!?

It had to be explained to me (I assume, after I'd gotten over my indignation at being asked a question with no right answer), that the goal of the question wasn't to produce a correct answer as much as an insight into whether the current state of the glass is more good or bad—and, by association, the state of mind of the person answering the question.

At this point, I'm pretty sure there was no further discourse on the nature of the half-empty/half-full question, but, like any good Zen koan, it lingered in my mind, for me to mull and puzzle over every time I heard it asked again.

We have all come to accept that "half full" reads as "good," and is therefore associated with an optimistic outlook. I guess this is because the phrasing focuses on the amount of liquid that is there, thus emphasizing abundance, which is generally associated with good. Whereas "half-empty" focuses on how much liquid is gone, thus emphasizing depletion, which is generally seen as bad. But in real life, there are plenty of circumstances in which having less of something would be preferable—for example, if the glass contains repulsive cough medicine that you just want to get down as quickly as possible. In this case, calling the glass "half-empty" would indicate an optimistic viewpoint!

It seemed to me that this was less a question about how you impose your emotions on the world and more simply a question of context. If I were, for example, in the middle of filling the glass, I'd probably call it half full. But if I were in the midst of draining it, I'd call it half empty. The circumstances under which the glass arrived at its current state have everything to do with what words are used to describe it. The inherent goodness or badness of the situation do not come into play.

Even in a situation where a value judgment could be made on the relative fullness of the glass, how the words are used could completely change their interpretation. If I were, for example, a bartender filling the glass, and a server were trying to whisk it out of my hands, I would stop them by exclaiming, "It's only half full!" In this context, even though I used the words "half full," I'm still conveying the negative aspects of the situation.

In the end, the question is less about what's in the glass and more about what's going on around it.

The glass itself is still just a glass. The liquid in it is still just liquid. It has no inherent virtue. It's time we stopped using it as a symbol for every person's outlook on life! It's time we dumped this glass (metaphorically) once and for all!