Half-Empty or Half-Full?

The Art of Re-Framing, is really just another way of saying perspective. Half-empty, or half-full. Why is it so much easier to say half-empty? Probably because we're thinking "in about two seconds, I'm going to pick up the glass and the water's going to be gone." It takes a lot more energy to stand up, go to the kitchen, and re-fill the glass, if you catch my drift. It's so much easier to be negative and not even realize it. After all, the glass is half-empty-- we tell ourselves we're just being realistic.

Last night I had an interesting conversation with my boyfriend-- and I realized how hard it can be to see perspective for what it is. After all, to the untrained eye, personal perspective is synonymous with reality. The tragedy is, if one's perspective is skewed towards the dismal, one would always see reality as grim and, well, dismal. But if that's the case, how are we ever supposed to be happy?

That's when I realized what an odd person I am. I don't believe it's ever possible to see "reality." The concept of reality, as we understand it (what's absolutely, unequivocally "true") cannot possibly be perceived by an individual. Everything we look at, everything we think about, remember, and imagine, is tinted by our past (who we are inherently, who we were raised to be, and who we became by chance and circumstance). We don't see anything as it is because we're too busy seeing it the way we think it is, or the way we think it should be. We create our own reality by merely being ourselves. But, unless we take the time to actively pay attention to the way we think, we don't notice it at all. In other words, we're all looking at the world through tinted glasses (rose or otherwise), but we all believe we're seeing 20/20 without a prescription.

The only way we're going to be able to tell what tint we're seeing is by talking to the people around us and trying to see what they see. I came to this conclusion awhile ago when I realized that most of the people I talked to didn't see the problems with everything. It was a bizarre realization. For a long time, I was convinced that everyone else was ignorant and foolish. Then, it occurred to me that if most people didn't see problems with everything that maybe there weren't problems with everything and I didn't need to worry so much (wow, this is making me look stellar). Anyway, the point is, now I'm trying taking time to notice my perspective. I'm working to re-frame my initial reaction to things. And I'm hypothesizing: sooner or later I'll find that how happy I am depends solely on how I perceive myself and the world around me.