What If…

The glass is just a glass?  What if it isn’t half anything?  I mean, it was a nice little object lesson once upon a time.  Now it’s just annoying.  I hate it when people ask me if I see life with a half full or half empty glass.

Wanna know the truth?  I don’t see it either way.  It’s life, not a hollow piece of fragile glass with which we either have it good or bad.  Life is what we pour into the glass or what we pour out of it into others.  Life is alive.  A glass with water up to the half-way mark is just a vessel that is sitting there– stagnant.  What you do with that vessel is life.

I feel that way about a lot of things.  Sure, they were nice little object lessons or pithy sayings the first time I heard them.  Take the over-quoted and oft misused “You can’t tell me what you think until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.”  Says who?  Really?  I have to murder someone like the guy on death row to tell him that it’s wrong to murder?  I have to beat my kid senseless, land him in the hospital– do all that to tell you that it’s wrong to abuse your child?  I have to move in with a man I am not married to before I can tell you that the Bible says it is wrong?  What? Really?  Don’t get me wrong, those who have been there often really can help you in practical ways that those who haven’t can’t.  I don’t discount that!  But come on.  We’ve taken a proverb (I was always told it was an Indian proverb but what do I know) and put it on par with scripture!

I like to examine these kinds of things from time to time.  In fact, I use my writing to explore the way these ideas pervade life. I did it a lot in Argosy Junction and next month it’s going to be a big part of the book I write for CampNaNoWriMo.  It’s an interesting way to see nuances of plots you otherwise might miss.