Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The glass half-full


Believe it or not we are less than one month away from spring, my favorite season of the year. Time moves by so fast that we barely get settled in one season when the next one is right upon us. I suppose that is a good thing because when it is either too hot or too cold you usually don’t have all that long to wait before things change.

Perhaps it is only my imagination but does it seem like it is hotter for longer periods of time than it is warm and pleasant?

In Southern California we have longer periods when the weather is mild or average, but our memories seem to hold on to the hotter and unpleasant days longer than those that are average.

When you think about it our weather doesn’t often get hot around here until July and it cools back down right around Halloween. Our hot months are usually from July, August, September, and October. November can have a few warm days, but they are not sustained for the entire month.

Consequently we have about four hot months and the rest of them are rather average so why is it that we hold on to the memories of the hot unpleasant days that are in a minority instead of the average ones that comprise the majority?

Obviously there are different weather patterns around the globe that aren’t like those of Southern California but the point I was making was not as much about the climate as much as it was about the things we choose to store in our memory banks.

As far as our memories are concerned we tend to hold on to the bad ones perhaps longer than the great ones. We could have had just one bad day in a week but we were willing to classify that as a bad week when there were six other days that were routine. Why don’t the average days get as much recognition?

Are we being programmed to dwell upon negativity over things that are positive? When you think about the overall population, most people are decent and hard-working people, but only the really bad minority of citizens seem to capture the spotlight.  I suppose that's what is meant by "news", something different, otherwise every day would be a boring procession of sameness.

Millions of cars go back and forth daily all times of day and night, but only the few accidents are recorded in the news while the average days of calmness go unnoticed.

The majority of people experience routine days where not much happens out of the ordinary, but they only choose to remember the great days or the worse ones, mostly the worse. When things operate at a pretty even pace, they go by relatively unnoticed, but the bad ones seem to dominate our memory banks for years. Why is that?

I am just over sixty years of age. I would guess that if I totaled up all my normal days and strung them together they would make up about fifty eight continuous years, while maybe only a few total months would make up my bad days and perhaps just under a couple of years would be great times. With that many average days why do I seem only to remember the abnormal ones?

I’m reminded of the glass being either half-full or half-empty. When you see it as half-full you have great hope, but when you see it as half-empty you sense fear and despair. In truth it is the exact same amount, but how we experience it is totally different.   Someone once said that our consciousness is made up not only by 90% of what happens to us but, instead, 10% of our perception of what happens.

If I had a one-hundred-mile-trip to make and thought about where I was at the fifty-mile marker, it would be different if I thought, “Oh darn, I have fifty more miles to go,” rather than, “Wow, I only have fifty more miles to go.” It would be the same distance to cover, but a quite different attitude about doing so.

If I am living my life worried about how bad things are, yet refusing to acknowledge the great things that surround me, that would deeply impact my spirit as I go about my life.

If I attended a university to earn a degree in a certain subject and after two years thought; “Gosh, I have two more grueling years to go before I earn my degree;” as opposed to “Wow, look at how much I have gained in these first two years of studying.” It is the same person in the same position, yet a totally different attitude.

The difference between the glass being half-full or half-empty is huge, but it is the same physical thing. If we see our lives as this wonderful passage that we are experiencing rather than the sporadic highs and lows perhaps when things get low you can know in your mind, “This, too, shall pass.”

I have personally learned that no matter how hard I worry about things that are out of my control, I still can’t control them. When I wake up tomorrow, if I wake up, I will still be less than six foot tall. When I die I will be still be Black and under six-foot tall. No amount of worry will ever change these things, yet I still find myself worrying.

Although there are many things that we can’t control, there are also many that we can, yet we choose to spend more of our available time on the ones we can’t rather than those we can. Doesn’t it make more sense to spend more time doing things that you are capable of doing rather than those that only cause you to worry?

Both are virtually the same thing, but the difference is in your attitude about the thing. Do you see the glass as half-full most of the time, or half-empty? Even though they may be virtually the same thing, there’s a world of difference between the two experiences because of our attitude towards them! 

You are the artist drawing the picture of your life. Will you choose to paint is optimistically or pessimistically. Your choice!

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