When looking at these wine glasses, do you see them as half-empty, half-full, or an opportunity for a couple of drinks? This oft-referenced phrase is a litmus test to determine whether you're a pessimist, an optimist or a realist. However, it's also obviously an oversimplified way to summarize a complex worldview through a minuscule and irrelevant data point. Our perspective is a critical element in how we approach life, and the decisions we need to make, so gaining a proper understanding of it is important. That's part of why we place more importance on whether or not the idiom, every cloud has a silver lining, rings true rather than worrying about the contents of the glass. By using the half-level glasses as a litmus test, our approach is more often derived from how we feel in the moment. In looking for the silver linings, it encourages us to use hindsight of the good that comes from the bad to adjust our perspective for pressing forward. And it's put much more eloquently by Oscar Wilde.
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise for which we are later, in the fullness of time and understanding, very grateful for!”
As beauty grows from the ashes of a wildfire and forests breathe new life after a harsh thunderstorm, so too can trial and hardships present opportunities in our lives. This is why using the half-level glasses to calibrate our approach is so short-sighted. At any given moment, life can feel half-empty or half-full. What's more important is how we weather the storm until we reach the other side and how we choose to grow in the aftermath.