The Glass Half Full

My mother is the optimist of all optimists. Whenever she faces a tough time, or when one of us faces an obstacle she reminds us "Well, I always choose to see the glass half full....and....", then she will continue making an observation about the situation that finds that positive point of view. For instance: when I was crying about my marriage ending and how I didn't have any choice or control in the situation she said "Well I always choose to see the glass half full, and you and Bud are lucky that you are such good friends."

You can see how I tend to be an optimist myself, I was trained well. I am so grateful for my Mom's point of view. It has always been helpful to look for the silver lining in any cloud. It helps me be resilient. I think of myself like a basketball...usually in the air, in the middle of a fun game. Once in a while I hit the ground but bounce up rather quickly to be passed on to another situation and maybe even score a few. But, there have been times in my life that I have been dribbled pretty close to the ground and had a harder time finding the resilience to bounce back up and into the game. However, I always do because I have been trained to look for the bright spots, the open spaces, and have learned that it's a lot more fun to be in the game high, than close to the ground.

That being said, I have objected to my mom's theory that it's best to look at the glass half full...be an optimist. At one point when she was reminding me of her optimistic view I pointed out that I would never be a pessimist. I can't even imagine not trying to find the "sunny side" of any cloudy day. My question is how do we appreciate the glass 1/2 full and still want it to be completely full? That requires a step beyond optimism in my view, it requires a blend of realism with the optimism. Thomas Edison would never have invented the light bulb if he had been content to see the glass 1/2 full. I believe Tom was an optimist. I believe he saw the world through pretty rosy glasses, but he wasn't content to say "I see the glass half full, or "Aren't I lucky that I have a fire to study by?", or "Gee this candle is sure a bright one tonight." No, he took a look at how lucky he was to see the world as a pretty optimistic place, but how can I make it better? He had to push beyond the "Pollyanna" vision and the rose colored glasses to make life EVEN better.

I have a friend who raised way more than her share of kids. What an amazing person she was. Always optimistic and funny as heck. She wrote me a poem once thanking me for seeing her as she was...through the clown surface. "I've always been the village clown. Always up and never down..." She would help us mothers get through our grey days by cracking us up with her kids antics. She was an artist too so she had tempra paint around the house. Tempra paint is powdered and then mixed with water for the desired consistency and color. Her kids got her paint and made it "snow" in their bedroom. Can you just imagine that picture of them jumping up and down while making it snow. Well they were good kids and recognized they better clean up the mess so they put a hose through the window to wash down the "snow". Can you imagine Mom's surprise to enter to the room and see rivers of "green" tempra paint all over the room? If only I could tell the story with the antimation she did appreciating her kids ingenuity. I admired her because she could see the humor in this devastating circumstance. What I saw later in life is that she chose to see the "bright" side of situations with her children when they were older that weren't so bright, really. She helped me see that we can't always see the glass as half full because it isn't. I recognized that rose colored glasses can sometimes turn into blinders. We have to be able to see things for what they are or we won't be able to resolve them.

So in summary, I believe it is absolutely awesome to be raised in a household where we looked on the "sunny side of the street". It is good to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. But sometimes you have to recognize that the better plan is to be grateful for whatever is filling your glass, but wonder how you can fill it up to overflowing. Take off the blinders, take off the rose color glasses so you can see the world in all it's beautiful colors and for what it really is. Life. Life, full of clouds so we recognize the rainbows, full of sticky thorns on beautiful roses, dribbling the ball down on the floor to get the resilience to bounce up for a pass and a basket.