Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Half Full or Half Empty



"Do you think the glass is half full, or half empty?"

In life, there may be at least 3 types of people :

1) Those who would ponder if the glass is half full.

2) Those who would ponder if the glass is half empty.

3) And those who would drink up the water immediately, without letting the question bother them. For them, thirst is the most immediate and pressing need. The question and its answer don't matter as much.

Literally, and figuratively.

Take education, for example.

Some people praise the merits of a country's educational system.
Some people wax lyrical about its faults.
And there are some who long just for the privillege of being able to go to school to study, nevermind its strengths or weaknesses. Philosophy isn't something they have the luxury to indulge in at the moment.

We can take far too many things for granted sometimes, the same for other examples as well. Do we continue to debate 'half-full or half-empty' in blithe ignorance of those who long even for a sip of water?


5 Comments:

Blogger dan said...

Good analogies...

Sometimes I get lost in my own little world of personal issues and feel as if the grass must be greener on the other side, if only I could get there.

"Oh if only such-and-such would come to pass - then everything would be right with the world," I think.

But then I also think, perhaps, that nothing we do can fulfill us until we become an instrument of grace in other people's lives.

Haha, thanks for getting my neurons ticking over. If neurons tick over.

2:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Dan Heh, once I heard a very good quip that was used in a sermon about marriages, and it went "If the grass seems greener on the other side, WATER YOUR OWN LAWN!!!"

That's true on so many levels :)

@Grace Let me guess, you are the 3rd type right? :)

But a drawback about just picking up the water and drink is that you might very well forget the preciousness of the water at some point, and glaze over the fact that you once were really really thirsty ;)

5:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh dear, I just posted as "news" :)

5:48 AM  
Anonymous cheryl said...

Thanks Grace, good point!! we have so much, and we are so much, but we look at what we have not or are not, and become really ungrateful. So many things become dilemmas, but we forget that it's a luxury to HAVE those dilemmas in the first place. Maybe learning to be grateful for those dilemmas will help us out of them! :)

11:07 AM  
Blogger GraceL said...

Dan, glad to help get that process going :) But it's true that we can sometimes get so dissatisfied with things that we become lost in our own needs, instead of looking outwards.

Cheryl, yeah, we tend to take some things for granted so easily, that we turn to nitpicking what we have, or turning them into dilemmas instead. And forget how blessed we are simply to have them. Like what you've said, maybe learning to be grateful for those 'dilemmas' will help us out of them :)

8:06 AM  

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