The Glass of "Half-Full" Fame

 I do not know if many cultures share the idiom of the glass half full or half empty, but surely there is a comparable expression among all people: the same ambiguous experience can be seen as good, or can be seen as bad. It all depends on the person looking.

I suspect that I have not appreciated that analogy much, perhaps because it has become too mundane to consider much. When something's always there, you stop seeing it.

So it is quite possible that I have had hundreds of experiences that relate to the perceived volume of cups, but I have just one on my mind.

For the past 3 months, I have had abdominal bloating and pain. The whys aren't important [for this blog, I mean. And anyway, they are at this point still unknown], but the experience is. It leaves me frustrated and uncomfortable. Yet here's the interesting bit: 2 years ago, after my second spinal surgery, I went through similar days of abdominal bloating and pain [the surgical approach was from the front, meaning the surgeon pushed aside my abdominal organs to get to the spine. Hence the bloating pain]. The bloating and pain was basically the same, but I tolerated the post-surgical one better. There are of course lots of reasons into why that is, but part of that tolerance was perspective. I knew I was in the process of healing, and so was more optimistic. In other words, it's the expectation of where the pain leads that is influencing the variations in experience.

Somatic feelings aside, this is quite the insight for me. I have heard so many people say things such as "Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you" or "The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives." I considered that understanding those points would be beyond my ability. But here I have my own two experiences with the same [ish] type of pain yet with different mindframes. Which leads me to tell you--It is theoretically possible to have pain and feel joy. No one and no thing can stop you from feeling happiness. Just your own mindset.

To be clear, I don't have that mindset yet. I think it would take a lot of mental training to exert my will to have joy over the incoming data telling me that things aren't that great.

And to be fair, it takes the recognition of something as "wrong" or "awful" before you can begin to make it right.

So the half glass approach is not a one-size-fits-all type of solution.

But I'd say choosing happiness or optimism is a pretty good flex over all of the daily happenings of life.