The Cup is Half Full!

The movie "Apollo 13", starring Tom Hanks, tells the story of the spaceship that experienced an explosion on its way to the moon. This explosion threatened the astronauts' very survival by limiting the amount of oxygen and electricity that they had to work with. Early in the rescue process, the NASA Flight Director asked, "Can we review our status here? Let's look at these things from a standpoint of status. What have we got on that spacecraft that's good?"

Throughout the rest of the movie, NASA was not just focused on what the problems were; they mainly focused on utilizing what was working well in order to compensate for what was not. Had they just focused on the problems, they would never have gotten the astronauts back safely.

No doubt, you've heard that age-old question: "Is the cup half full or half empty?" Really, the larger question is whether to focus on what you have or what you don't have. I'd like to propose that the cup is most defintely half full, and here are two reasons why.

First, it doesn't matter how empty it is. You don't go get a cup in order to keep it empty; you get one to put things in it. You don't use what there isn't; you just use what there is. I could put 10 ounces of water in a 10-ounce cup, leaving no emptiness. Then I could put 10 ounces of water in a 20-ounce cup, leaving half the cup empty. The volume of water doesn't change, but the emptiness factor does. A lot of times people feel quite content with what they have until they compare themselves to someone who has more, and suddenly they feel some emptiness creep in.

Second, it is hard or even impossible to truly measure what you don't have. Using the example above, you can ask how many ounces of water I have and I can conclusively say "10 ounces". However, if you ask me how much I don't have, I couldn't tell you. Technically I "don't have" the rest of the water in the whole world! For the same reason, I can tell you how much money is in my wallet, but I can't tell you how much money is not in my wallet because I don't know the total amount of money in the whole world.

Whether I'm measuring water or some other aspect of life, I always try to focus on what I have, not primarily focusing on what I'm missing. This small but signficant perspective has often helped me to be content and distinguish my needs from my wants. Similar to the Flight Director for Apollo 13, I try to use strengths of myself or my community to compensate for weaknesses (or seek improvement the areas of weakness). This has usually led to recognizing opportunities that others overlook. In fact, I often enjoy the challenge of trying to accomplish a mission on a shortage of resources because it forces me to creatively use what I do have more efficiently.