I see a small problem with this discussion.

I've come back to comment on it because although it is a lighthearted thing here, the same problem might also apply to other areas of life and can cause serious conflict.

The replies here are all interesting, thoughtful, amusing, and enjoyable, so I am not critisizing this thread. What I want to point out is the larger picture.

The "half full/half empty" reference is intended to be a metaphor. As with any metaphor, it is important not only to understand the metaphor, but to understand its application. If you take the metaphor too literally, the metaphor will break and will therefore have no more value as a metaphor.

The same is true of mathmatics. Math is a way of describing-- modelling--the world around us using symbols and rules. But you have to make an intellegent connection to with that metaphor. Just because 3 + 5 equals 8 doesn't mean that 3 apples and 5 oranges will give you 8 kumquats.

The connection to the "half empty/half full" metaphor comes up in many many other threads here. Depression makes us see everything negatively, so we constantly reinforce the concept of this metaphor (if not the metaphor itself) as a way of supporting each other.

For example, how many threads are on this board now where someone is down because they had difficulty doing something, managed one day to break through and get part of that "something" accomplished, but then beats themselves up because they didn't get the whole thing done.

We set goals for ourselves or receive "homework" from our therapists, and if we don't reach those goals completely we berate ourselves and feel bad instead of looking at what we have accomplished... and forget about using the "homework" as a means of understanding ourselves better and instead just focus on our inablitily to complete it in full.

These are examples of the glass being "half empty" rather than "half full" and that is something that depression really takes us down to the mat with... and it is important to reinforce positive thoughts as much as we can... to make a conscious effort to do so... as an important step in our recovery.

Most of the other posts in this thread are really examples of that positive way of reinforcement... taking the metaphor "literally" and then finding ways to come up with positivily thinking about the negative qualities of that literal translation. So in a sense we have all applied this metaphor to itself as a sort of meta-metaphor... but if I go more into that my brain is going to start to hurt.

Let me re-emphasize that I am not critisizing this thread at all... rather I saw this thread as an opportunity to make a comment from another viewpoint... and I realize that this viewpoint is out of context with this particular thread, but I believe very strongly that it is an important concept in its own right and worth thinking about... and that is the idea of taking things meant to be metaphors to improve our lives, but instead taking them literally, loosing the meaning of the metaphors, and sometimes leading to hurtful results.

Sorry for my rant here... but I am so glad for this thread and the opportunity to bring this up... it is something that is often on my mind.