A Closed Deal

And so I have concluded for myself what my friends have been telling me all this time -- I have a tendency to close the deal before it even begins. Theoretically commonly known as pessimism, but overshadowed by the feelings of denial that come when I convince myself that I have a bright outlook and I look at the glass as half full. As if there was a glass in the first place. Maybe I'm denying the glass' existence for myself so that I won't be expecting anything from it. Like what my soon-to-be lawyer friend tells me, it's a conspiracy to hoodwink us into believing there's something there that wasn't there before. What if the glass is actually a fruit? A banana perhaps, that however you look at it from many different angles, it'll remain a banana, only that it's given a variety of names depending on whatever a priori concepts you've inherited, a posteriori concepts you have imbibed post-natal. Then, the only logical thing expected of me to do is to eat the banana and hope that it's sweet, hope that it was worth it.

In my case maybe, I see the banana, I think it's an altogether different fruit, like a papaya or a stinky durian. Then I figure the only way to eat such a fruit is to crack it open by throwing it to the ground and gather all the broken pieces on the floor with my bare hands. That's fine I guess, but I'd also have to consider my survival. I would probably need to plant the papaya or durian seeds in loam soil and wait till my next feeding. By harvest time, there would have been at least 10 times more fruit than before. It would be difficult to crack the fruits open, but at least 1 out of 10 would probably be sweet had the tree enough water and sunlight during the course of the year. If I calculate the growth potentials and seasonal changes correctly, I would have at least 1 fruit per meal and I would never go hungry again even if the papaya weren't sweet. (Hey, this metaphor is starting to make some sense about my reality ...)

I spoke too soon. From the part of doing the expected, I'd probably overanalyze and conclude that I won't be satisfied with just a banana, and how it takes bananas forever to grow, how I'd eventually get sick of eating them without something so much as peanut butter, how the tree would eventually die ahead of me. I'd get depressed and then I'd think I wouldn't choke on the banana even if I tried. The sun would cast its heavy light on me and I'd have realize the banana would be my last meal. If I finish eating the whole thing, I wouldn't have anything to plant. If I decide to plant it, I'd die waiting for the tree to grow. There would be no compromise. It would be a closed deal.

And then I'd prove to myself time and time again, I'm not the type of person who'd see the glass in any other way. There is no water. Water is what I was looking for in the first place.