That Pesky Glass

You take a glass of about 16 ounces. You add eight ounces of milk. The glass is half empty. The glass is half full. You know cognitively that the glass is both, but your outlook in life correlates to which characterization you use to identify it. What difference does it make? You still have eight ounces of milk. You still haven't filled your glass. It's progress, presumably, if your intent is to fill a glass. If your intent is to drink a glass of milk, you may have wasted time more than necessary, or you may have saved yourself from spilling by stopping while you were ahead. It's all a matter of perspective, really. But perspective only matters if it's isolated. It's impossible to call a glass half empty without acknowledging that it is also half full. It is foolish to call the glass half full to accomodate for its being half empty. The assessment of the glass may prove to be fruitless altogether if, in the time you spend determining how good a place you're in, the milk spoils. And yet it is a mark of human nature to be acutely aware of our condition. Is it a mark of evolution to not be satisfied with 'just keep swimming', or is it an impediment to survival the way a child's demanding why a simple task must be done is an impediment to productivity? Perhaps it should be simplicity, and not complexity that we seek. Perhaps if the matters we stressed over were simpler, we would be stronger when addressing them. It's only milk. It's only a messy room. It's only one class. It's only one test. Mosaics are beautiful because of their pieces. In the information age, everything is a mosaic; we just have more pieces. Maybe life is not as hard as we make it...maybe is should comb my hair and go to sleep...