The cliche of the full-half glass

‘The glass is half empty, see?’ said a thick voice from the far corner. I glanced and saw a couple of guys sitting under a dim light, red as the evening sun. Above them, on the wall, was posted a sign, ‘NO SMOKING’. They were smoking anyway.

‘No,’ his friend replied, ‘it’s half full.’

Cliche, I thought and continued gazing at a girl through the whiskey filled glass. For once she looked at me. So it seemed or maybe at the whiskey on the table or both.

People at table across me whispered politics and talked of prime ministers and MPs and government, words as delicate yet powerful toyed in between intellectual bargaining as I could only manage to gaze through the whiskey filled glass. Somewhere around the room, people talked of economics and the theory of dynamism and related Buddhism with quantum science.

A silent man sat under the King’s portrait smiled as he fiddled his rum-filled glass.

Everyone seemed to know too much these days.

Voices from the far corner continued, cliches bouncing around the room, growing louder, angrier, warmer, hotter, colder…

‘No!’ shouted the man of the half empty view, ‘look…it’s half empty!’

Everyone turned and looked at them.

For once the room was silent. Dead. Politics and all other theories died too. So did the cliche.

‘No! It’s half full! Look!’

They stood up and shouted, talking of breaking each other’s noses, until the silent man under the King’s portrait walked towards them, lifted the cliched glass, drank, and walked away smiling. Then he said, ‘it’s fully empty now…’

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Tags: cliche, reflections, weird

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