Is the glass half-full, or half-empty?

The glass is half-full, and there should always be more where that came from in the refrigerator.

This of course runs against what I believe when I’m beset by people. Sartre said that “Hell is Other People” and along those lines I understand what he meant by that. When I’m working with other people, by and large the glass is half-empty, it’s got a little hole drilled in it so it’s actually a dribble glass and it was cast improperly so there are parts of the cup that are too thick and other parts that are too thin and if you touch it wrong the entire glass can fall apart like a super-fragile Christmas ornament.

Mostly I feel the “half-empty” because, in a very generalized way, people are glorious disappointments. They are frail, they fail, they sometimes embrace ignorance and apathy and sometimes they do things that boggle common sense. Feeling this pessimism doesn’t really get me down, as people don’t really get me down because I have accepted long ago that how I see the world and how I act in it is uniquely mine and I’ve made peace that expecting anyone else to live the way I do is the height of folly. So I can be a half-glass full guy in a world full of glass-half-empties. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is to not let the turkeys get you down. In that regard, it’s good to have your own set of glasses that you keep to yourself.