[2 minute read]
A dear old friend asked how I am these days. “Glass half empty or glass half full?”
The friend knew me well. Knows me well?
The friend likely knows my favorite response of yore:
The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Hey Smiley:) How am I these days? Wondering why we use that metaphor for the dynamics of the human soul:)
There’s evaporation even during stillness.
Unless we cover the glass. Not very natural. What’s the point of having liquid in the glass when it’s covered. That’s what bottles and containers are for.
Spigots refill it unexpectedly.
Welcomed faucets hitherto unrecognized as fountains. Unwelcome ones too.
Sometimes I guzzle the glass’ contents, ravenously thirsty.
Sometimes I guzzle its contents, not out of thirst, but more out of curiosity.
Is the drink still cold and refreshing, or strangely warm, yet wet?
Were the contents meant even to be drunk? Or merely beheld?
The glass and its contents intrigue me because they have a strange and interesting relationship.
A static container for a fluid fluid.
I can relocate the glass, and the carried fluid changes location too, but remains contained just the same.
I tote the glass to keep with me the promise inside it.
Different fluids come and go.
The same fluid can change while it rests within it. To the eye, statically contained, but undergoing dynamics not seen with that eye, known only by the product washing past my nose and tongue.
This glass and fluid have an interesting relationship.
Static. Dynamic.
Moved as one.
One consumed — replaceable but satisfying, only because it’s consumable; or only because it is consumed; or both, consumable *and* consumed.
The other durably enduring its changeable content.
Is my ego a glass container? Are my feelings and states and thoughts fluid? Is the larger ‘me’ the glass and fluid? Half… what? The other half… what else? Empty? Full? Twice as big as needed?
We like and use metaphors for things too boundless for expression within word’s limits. Even thought’s boundaries. Like you, old friend. Like me…
We each are a fluid glass.
Empty.
Full.
Half.
Twice.
Big…
Neil D. 2020-05-11
Related: The glass-half-full metaphor
Feel with Neil 
One thought on “Glass Half… What?”