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The “Glass Philosophy” has been termed as the “litmus test of an individual’s outlook on the world”. Is the glass half full or half empty? But are people always just either optimists or pessimists? There’s no in-between? No grey area?

I refuse to believe that. So I came up with another approach.

(Note this—this is the fourth blog post of a blog series titled My Formula for Changing the World. You can navigate back and check the previous ones out if you haven’t read them yet. It isn’t necessary to read them in order, but it’ll be easier to understand if you do.)

The Glass is Always Completely Full

I’m sure all of you must’ve heard some time or the other about the “glass”.

Is the glass half empty or half full? What do you see when you look at it? The water, or the empty air?

It’s a favourite question among thinkers, and it of course divides the human population among optimists or pessimists, because if you say that the glass is half full, you’re termed as an optimist, and if you say that the glass is half empty, then people blame you for being the pessimist.

In this post, I question this age-old concept.

Why does the glass always have to be half empty or half full? Why can’t the glass ever be completely full? Why doesn’t anyone talk about that now?

Here, I’ll tell you.

It’s always about perception, how you look at things defines what you are, and that is why, since no one had ever looked at the glass being completely full, no one ever thinks like that.

Now, if I take this study, I’d say that there are two ways to look at things.

The original glass approach: This is the normal, ordinary way; people look at the glass, and see that the water reaches halfway, so they either say that the glass is half empty or they say that the glass is half full.

The new glass approach: This is the newest form of looking at things. I plan on maling it new in trends.

The Philosophy of the Glass

What happens here is that you basically take a new glass, which is partially smaller than the original glass.

Now you transfer the water of the previous glass into this new glass, and voila! The glass is completely full now.

No half-full-half-empty paradox.

The glass is full.

Isn’t that amazing? You’ve always looked at the glass as half empty or half full, and then suddenly someone comes along and gives you a new glass. Then we transfer the water into that smaller glass, and now the water is sufficient to fulfill it. Now the glass is full.

Doesn’t that give you an important lesson? It tells you that the water is always capable of fulling the glass up to the brim.

It was always us who were looking at it in a way that limited its use.

We called the glass either half full or half empty, and never bothered to see if the problem persisted in the water or in the glass.

The thing is, sometimes you don’t just need to see the same glass again and again and then wonder where you’re going wrong. Because you must be going wrong, that is why people are categorizing you as either an optimist or a pessimist.

Sometimes, you have to change your methods, your way of looking at things. Sometimes, to really figure things out, you don’t just have to look at the contents; if you put your focus on the container, you’d see how much that container matters too. The container. The thing which is holding the thing.

So that’s what I discovered when I was searching for my formula.

I made this relevation because I realised that people needed to know this.

The glass is always completely full.

We’re just holding the wrong glass.

The Human Philosophy

Do You Look at What You Are or What You Aren’t?

The Glass Discussion brings us to the next major paradox.

If we humans always look at the glass as what is, or what isn’t, do we also do the same thing with ourselves?

This brings us back to the theory of positive and negative space that we discussed back in the second post of this blog series.

(Haven’t read that yet? Go ahead—How to Change the World With Philosophy and Math.)

If we are not looking at the earth and the space as we had back in the second post, then we’d be looking at ourselves.

This diagram might look confusing, but it’ll be not once I tell you what’s going on.

Now once you’ve looked at this diagram, I want to ask you one question, will you now be the optimist and focus on what you are? Or will you be the pessimist, and focus on what you aren’t? It’s all coming down to you.

What will you choose to focus on—the things you excel at, or the things you don’t? The things you love and like to do, or the things you don’t? The things other people like you for, or the things other people don’t? What will you focus on?

It’s not as easy as you think it is.

If you choose to focus on the things you are, the good things, then you’ll be really happy and satisfied with yourself and you’d be content with what you’ve got. But that wouldn’t be the true picture. Do you feel, in this case, like you’re missing something out?

Do you feel like you could become better because you have more potential; but because you are choosing to ignore the things you don’t have, or you are not, then you are sabotaging yourself?

But on the other hand, if you choose to look at the things that you are not, all the bad things about you, then you’re indulging in self-sabotaging too, because you’re looking at only the bad things and not any good ones.

You’re victimizing yourself, selling yourself short, only looking at your flaws.

It’s a long discussion, and no one can ever perfectly find out what things to hold onto and what things to let go.

Because everytime you choose to remember the things you are (the black part) you’d see that you have so many negative qualities (the white part) and you’ll feel bad about them.

And every time you choose to honour your mental peace and leave out the things that you are not, in a way, you are letting go of huge opportunities that could help you become your better self. Because you’re choosing to ignore the things you aren’t, instead of working towards becoming those things.

This is related to the glass theory itself.

But this was the “optimist-pessimistic approach” again.

Transferring the Water

Now comes the new person approach. When we become a new person, we transform ourselves, we pour ourselves out in a new body, and then see how we fit.

Let’s see.

The complete coloured part would be the “original you”. It would be the person you were born, the person your mum gave birth to, the person that you are. This combines all the genes you were born with, all the traits you have no control over.

This is what you were, until you began consciously changing yourself to fit in the world or to achieve some self-determined goal.

The second person is the person you want to be. Simple as that. It is the person you dream, aspire, wish to become.

Now, because you are this small, weak human and you want to be this giant, huge human with a huge potential, you transform yourself.

Or, in glass-speak, you “pour” your personality and your soul and mind into this huge person. What comes to be is this.

Now, when you look at this human, you realise that we came back to the glass situation, whether the glass is half empty or half full.

The only difference is that this time we know where we’ve come from, we know where this water came from and where it will go.

And we ask ourselves, are we half-human, or half-not? Are we half full or half empty? Are we defined by all the things we are, or are we defined by all the things we aren’t?

What is this all about?

I know, many of us go through his personality dysphoria from time to time. We don’t know what we should be, how we should be like, what we should do, because our minds are muddled and our thoughts are astray.

In that time of loneliness and anxiousness, we need to tell ourselves that we are everything.

We are what we were, and we are what we will be. We’re a mixture of the two. A combination. Our present selves are half of our past, and half of our future.

They combine two people in one: one of those people is the person we were, and the other is the person we aren’t yet, but we want to get there.

The Solution

So to become this self you wish to be, you work, of course.

You work on yourself, so you can become the person that can fit the role of the things you want to do. You try to merge two people into one, your past and your future, and what comes to be is your present.

So you become this. Now you are this.

Now it’s up to you what you want to focus on.

Do you focus on the things that are highlighted (those that you highlight or others do) or do you focus on the things that are not highlighted (those that are left alone or ignored)?

Let’s take it up the notch now.

So, now we come to the main topic of our discussion, what all this fiasco is actually about—which is, changing the world.

So if you want to change the world, you need to look at it like you’ve never looked at it before. For that reason, we’ll see what we were looking at until now.

Ask yourself, until now, that is, until you started reading this blog—were you looking at the world like it was, or were you looking at the world like it wasn’t?

And now, will you look at the world for what it is, or for what it isn’t?

Because that’s a really important question while thinking about changing the world.

Concluding the Glass Philosophy Discussion

Don’t forget to think about the question and wonder what exactly do we need to see in the world to come to a point where we are close to bringing a change to it.

Have ideas? Have questions? Have anything worth sharing? Contact us!