Is Your Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

My colleague Tago Mharapara entertained us at a recent CMS holiday gathering with stories about the First-Year Symposium he teaches. In an effort to provoke discussion about the concept of counter arguments, he had placed a glass half filled with water on his desk and asked the students in his 8 a.m. class to describe what they saw.

Then he waited. And he waited some more. Finally, one groggy student who could stand the silence no longer ventured, “a glass of water.”

“Good,” Tago answered. “What else?”

More silence. Eventually, an enterprising student offered that the glass was half empty.

Both observations were correct, of course. The difference was a matter of perspective.

It was one of those aha! moments teachers live for, and Tago proceeded to lead a discussion about different points of view.

His story prompted me to go around the table asking individuals whether they see the glass half empty or half full.

Greg Hoye said he sees a half-full glass. No surprise there. Greg can find the bright side of a power outage during a blizzard. A fireside, candlelit dinner with tuna tartare would be his first thought. On the flip side, he claimed his wife Roxanne can rattle off the downside of any situation, and there you have it, a well-balanced marriage.

Ben Besasie, our student employee, said he used the half-empty, half-full theme in his bar mitzvah speech. He and the other two students at our table all chose the half-full option. Again, no surprise. They are young and talented, and the world is full of opportunities. My colleague Barbara Hein quipped that she saw the glass as half full when she was their age, but now sees it as half empty.

For Tago – ever the analyst – the answer depends on the circumstances.

As for me, I see a half-full glass, or, as my dear husband said later that evening, a glass overflowing. Fair enough, and I put him in the same category as Roxanne. No downside escapes his notice. There you have it again – another well-balanced marriage. Each partner can see what the other does not.

Both perspectives are necessary to see the whole. That is what we want our students to discover, that what they see depends on perspective and that the perspectives of others have value.

As we lift our glasses in Christmas cheer this holiday season, let us clink a toast to the other’s perspective for the coming year. There is room in the glass for all points of view.