A Half Filled Glass

Such is life and such is our world – it is filled with optimists and pessimists – where a half filled glass is either brimming with all kinds of possibilities or that the other half is horribly empty and therefore inadequately needful, depending on who is looking at it.  Here is something interesting.  Before the 1830s, the Webster Dictionary did not have the word pessimist.  It could, in fact, have been as late as 1865 before it was commonly used.  Whereas the word optimism was already in the English lexicon since between 1730 and 1740, it took a whole century for its antonym to find its place in language.  One must wonder, “Why”?

Then, as soon as both words co-existed folks immediately began to correlate the two in fundamental terms like one would look at a proton and an electron.  Another interesting tidbit is that the negatively charged electron was discovered ahead in 1897, while the positively charged proton was only later identified and scientifically proven to exist in 1918. No relevance whatsoever to the point I will be making but I thought you might want to know that.  Or, perhaps the mere mention of “negatively and positively charged” could trigger a metaphoric effect towards wherever this musing will lead to.  Anyway, soon philosophers, political leaders, writers, ordinary people could not resist the inevitable contextual references between the optimist and the pessimist.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

--- Winston Churchill

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”

--- Rene Descartes

As it turned out the side-by-side pairing of the two words has resulted in the most number of quotes attributed to so many people and nothing even comes close to the number of posters, picture frames and plaques produced.  Could it be that just as the glass example suggests we are equally divided 50-50 into optimists and pessimists?  Not quite but close for Americans according to recent polling, although pessimists exceed optimists today.  A few years back most Americans were positively inclined.  Depending on which polls and when they were taken, it was 49% and 47%, switching back and forth between optimism and pessimism, and apparently there is always the remainder of folks (4% or so) who are either indifferent, don’t have an opinion, or they simply belong to a separate class of people – the “Oh, well, whatever” group.  But it is not true that the latter are mostly teenagers!

The Greeks are still the most pessimistic people in the developed world while Latvia and Lithuania are the most optimistic.  The most optimistic people in the third world may defy expectations because they are from some of the poorest regions of Africa.  The countries of Burkina Faso and Comoros have 95% of their population believe that there future lives will be better than their current ones.  Coming in second at 94% are Niger, Benin, Guinea and the Somaliland region.  The reason cited is that perhaps people who live at or near the abyss of the economic strata believe that their current situation could only get better, since there is no place to go down anymore but up, hence the reason for widespread optimism in those countries.  Unfortunately, the saddest countries are also mostly in Africa as well.  On top of the list is Chad, followed by Central African Republic, Congo, D.R and then there is Afghanistan.

So, what countries have the happiest population?  From last year’s survey, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden in that order topped the list.  And we say, “Hmm”.  By the way, the U.S. is at no. 11.  What is surprising is that three of the top five countries also have some of the highest tax rates – over 50% of personal income.  Ranked 2, 3, 4, in the top ten highest tax brackets are Sweden, Denmark and Netherlands, in that order.  To which my Democrat friends inevitably proclaim that there is a method to the current administration’s maddening goal to raise taxes in America.  Yes, there seems to be a method to their madness.  Or, is that just simply madness to their method. 

So, let’s get back to the half-filled glass.  No relevance whatsoever is the fact that the country’s electorate is divided almost down the middle between Democrats and Republicans while the Independents swing back and forth like an unregulated pendulum. 

At a personal level, what should we be?  States of optimism and pessimism had been there all along before there were words for them.  If you ask anyone optimism is the one we should adopt, should we not?

“A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.”

--- Don Marquis

“The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.”

--- George Will

And let us not forget the realist.  Although I will have to say that a realist is really either an optimist or pessimist who hedges his or her bet.  Generally speaking humans should be realists as grizzlies are too, but let’s set that aside for the moment.  My favorite wild cats – the cheetahs and lions – are optimists by nature.  The cheetah’s hunting success is only one kill for every ten attempts at a chase while lions, even hunting as a pride, catch their intended prey about 25% of the time.  A journeyman major league baseball hitter does better than a cheetah and about the same as the lions in terms of their statistical successes. However, the cats somehow remain optimistic since they keep chasing despite the potential for being kicked or gored by their prey and despite the dauntingly low kill percentage average.  Both man and the grizzly are realists because they hedge their bets by varying their dietary habits.  They can go vegetarian if meat is not readily available, or a mixture of both vegetable and fruits with fish and meat to balance their food supply.

We, humans all, have every reason to be optimistic.  Why not?  We’re the dominant species, we’re on top of the food chain and we’re the only ones who contemplate and can think and reason.  Yet, it is exactly the ability to think and reason that makes some of us optimists and others pessimists.  A realist is someone in a momentary state of mind when he or she is torn between feeling hopeful or dreadfully worried – a state of “Oh well, whatever”. 

“In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.”

--- Jack Nicholson

Apparently, there is no one who is totally 100 % indifferent to a situation.  We are either okay with one thing or not so thrilled about it.  To be independently neutral of opinion is rare.  “Oh, well, whatever!” is something teenagers may say, of course, but not with any kind of definitive conviction one way or the other when faced with the choice of being hopeful or suffer with forlorn hope.

A half-filled glass is not half empty because technically there are trillions of air molecules above the liquid line up to the brim.  So the glass is full after all.  And there the optimist brandishes his or her ability to see when it is not even faintly apparent to others.  The pessimist may claim to be cautious and rightfully so but only if that were the only condition. 

Yes, the pessimist worries most of the time; the optimist is constantly hopeful; the realist shrugs.  And here is where the positive proton and the negative electron come in (I can use them after all).  So, if one were an optimist, he or she is best paired with a pessimist, and vice versa.  The most common element in the entire universe by a huge margin over carbon (second most common) is the hydrogen atom – it has one proton (+) and one electron (-).  It is an unstable element but if two of them can grab just one oxygen atom (it has 8 electrons and 8 protons), we get water – the very same that can fill half the proverbial glass.  One could say that that is neither here nor there but think about it for a minute. With water we now have a stable molecule that has ten electrons (-) and ten protons (+), negatively and positively charged particles in equal number and in tight finger clasps.  Allegorical perhaps but it does tell us that optimists and pessimists could co-exist with the right balance.

One who is exceedingly ebullient should pair up with one who often is paralyzed with caution.  And if you’re by yourself you can adapt the Jack Nicholson state of mind – an optimist at one time, a pessimist at another.  The “whatever” crowd is the neutron – neither positively nor negatively charged.  The problem with that is that you never get to participate, especially not in a charged up action between protons and electrons.

Is it always bad to be a pessimist?  I don’t think so.  General Custer and his officers and men must have been all optimists at Little Bighorn and so were the cavalry of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in 1854.  We know what happened.  Perhaps a few pessimists or a temporary state of pessimism could have changed the outcome. General Eisenhower on the other hand first postponed the invasion by a day, pessimistic about the prospect on June 5^th, then gave the go ahead the following day, D-Day, confident and optimistic but a realist because in his breast pocket that morning of June 6^th he kept a short note to read just in case the invasion failed.  He was also known for the quote below:

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

--- Gen. Dwight Eisenhower

If you read carefully into that sentence, Eisenhower was pessimistic on one clause and, with a simple conjunction, optimistic on the other.  He was an organizer and a stickler for thorough and detailed planning but also believed that however best laid plans were, circumstances that ensue during execution will shred everything to pieces and the discipline in planning is what will save the day in order to adapt to unforeseen conditions.

So, there it is.  You can either be the bottom half of the glass or the upper half, or you can be just the glass (indifferent to whether it is half-filled or empty) but be prepared to switch whatever state of mind you were in if necessary when the situation calls for it.