I recently attended the immersion session for incoming students for the Master’s of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) at the University of Pennsylvania. This program is designed to bring various individuals from around the world once a month to learn the cutting edge research, ongoing initiative, and core principles in positive psychology.
The architect of the curriculum is Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and now considered the father of positive psychology. It is a rigorous and ambitious year-long program of courses, readings, lectures, group activities and projects designed to bring participants up to speed in this new, but geometrically exploding field. The five-day course I attended was peppered with stellar professors at the very pinnacle of their careers. Martin Seligman, Angela Duckworth, Ray Baumeister, Barry Schwartz, and Barbara Fredrickson — all luminaries in the field — were among those making presentations.
But it was James O. Pawelski, Ph.D., director of education and Senior Scholar in the Positive Psychology Center who was able to lead us with a series of lectures on the foundations of positive psychology. He initiated one of his lectures with a slide of a glass filled halfway and smiled at us.
“So, what do you see?” he asked.
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Ahh the curse of the complacent. This is the argument that allow for the political process we call “spin”. People say, “everybody in the US has an equal chance at success and happiness. That is true. What everybody doesn’t know is what all the choices are and the tools to get them.
Let us say the “water” in the glass equaled education. we all know that the more educated you are, the more financial success you are rewarded in this country. Let us say you leave high school with a glass half full. Let us say that in your surrounding community you see others doing well with glasses 3/4 or even full (representing bachelor’s, masters, doctorates, ect.) You become aware of that option. Just as you had an epiphany that “the truth had completely escaped you” and until somebody showed you, you didn’t even know that truth existed. So it is with children of poor environment or environments not conducive to learning. If around you you see nothing but half full glasses at best, you begin to think, “that is what full must mean”. If you look around you and all you see is people with high school diplomas, you begin to accept that is all you need to survive. When you see the school drop out dealing drugs and driving nice cars with lots of friends with a glass less then half full, it further derails this perception of the truth. Like the “monkey, banana, water spray” experiment (that as far as I know really didn’t take place in that exact setting) soon education becomes a source of anxiety as the rest of the culture berates those who try to exceed their predecessors achievements.
What i mean by the “curse of complacently” is too many people have a gut feeling that they are not “full glasses” but are too complacent to take up the fight to get the tools they need. Thus they teach their children the same and the curse passes from generation to generation.
I wake up in the morning with a half full glass since I had a wreck about 5 weeks ago and almost died from it . My back was broken and while they were trying to get me out I could see my life flash before me and what I had done the 60 years that I had lived and what my family would do if I didn`t make it . The back will mend and it makes me realize how precious life is and why so many people hate their lives when there are so many trying to just live .
Yes, Daniel, the glass if half-full with air. Add that half to the water-half and you’ve got a full glass. The lesson is: Life, with its dilemmas and its crossroads, must be engaged with two types of knowledge by which we make our decisions. There’s the visible part, represented by water, which is data and physical evidence. But also present in the glass of this life is the invisible,or spiritual part, and it must be considered as well. Life is just as much about what you can’t see (can’t predict or anticipate)as it is about what you see and can evaluate. We cannot “see” love, nor can we see marital fideltiy, nor joy or life-sustaining faith in a loving God. But they are very real factors in a satisfying, productive life, even as the glass half-full of air is just as real as the half containing tangible water.
Life is not about what happens to us; it really comes down to how we respond to what happens.
This is definitely an interesting analogy… I am not typically a fan of tricky-visuals, but the message here is definitely good. Initial perceptions and understandings of the world around us can change completely over time. Sometimes it really is all how you view something whether to be positive or negative.
I had the privilege to have the same conversation with James a few years ago. My response, was that really then, the cup runneth over – the whole room was filled.
Is the Glass half full or half empty….
This is the adaptation of Bhuddhist Chan philosophy(Zen in Japanese term)
If studemt
wish to learn about Zen, it has a lot for you to crack your mind because every phrase used has no meaning(or nonsense talk)… but as you dig deeper into the meaning, you will begin to admire what is the real meaning it is trying to express!
Finally “the glass” is observed correctly…it can never be empty. If I choose to fill it full of water it will no longer have air in it. or if I then fill it full of rocks and sand halfway then half the water will we displaced. And what does th question, “is the glass half full or half empty?” then mean? Choosing something means not choosing something else.