Are the Glasses in this Story Half-full or Half-empty?

People often try to label us as an optimist or pessimist by using the glass half-full or empty analogy. You know how it goes, see a half-filled glass as full and you’re an optimist and if it’s empty you’re a pessimist. So let’s suppose for moment you are sitting in a restaurant. The waitress brings you a half-filled glass of wine. Now imagine she brings you another and yet another glass filled with the same amount of liquid. How many half-filled glasses would it take before they start appearing half-empty? That was my dilemma leading up to the First Light Marathon in Mobile, Alabama when a string of horrible events happened.

I had been training for this marathon for months. Training was going well and a potential new personal record was in the cards. That’s when the proverbial first half-filled glass appeared. The forecast for race start was a cold 35°F. Glass half-full, I thought. I didn’t train for this temperature, but decided to adjust by wearing the long training pants and long-sleeve tech shirt. Then the weather service dropped the forecasted temperature each time I checked it. It went from 35 to 25 and finally landed at 10°F. If that wasn’t tough enough, the forecasted 20+ mile winds would produce below-zero wind chills. So rather than just being uncomfortable, the running weather had become dangerous….especially for those without the correct gear for such intense cold.

With only a couple days until the event, I went to our local running store to find cold weather gear since I had none of my own. However, such items are as rare as snow in Florida and what little there was had already been picked cleaned by locals running the coldest Disney Marathon in its history. So I started on “Plan B” which involved modifying some hiking gear for running. I tested it at Beresford Park on an unusually cold (23°F) morning the day before we were supposed to leave for Alabama. But the gear didn’t wick sweat off my body very well, which could be a deadly problem in sub-zero wind chills.

The gear test completed, I went back home, opened the front door and was greeted by oily smoke filling the living room. Something was on fire in the house. After a frantic search, I discovered the fan on my air handler had stopped working due to an exploded capacitor causing the heating elements to catch the surrounding insulation on fire. Had I returned even 30 minutes later, the house likely would have burned to the ground. I shut the power to off to the unit, put the fire out and called the AC guy. If the AC guy could get the unit repaired before 2 pm, I could still make the race. As luck would have it, the AC guy came right out and I had heat again by noon.

I called my wife to give her the good news about the house and the bad news about the gear test. While we debated the pros and cons of extreme cold running, our conversation was abruptly interrupted by her screams of terror and the sound of crunching metal in the background. She had been in a car accident. But I didn’t know where she was or if she was even still alive. What does someone do in a moment like this? Paralyzed by fear, uncertainty and shock, I clutched my head with my hands realizing my life as I knew it was likely over. Snapping out of it, I went into rescue mode making my best guess where she might be and sending someone to that location while I tried calling her cell phone over and over. After about 30 minutes, she answered her phone. She was “ok” (meaning injured but not dead or in the hospital), the other people were being loaded into ambulances and both cars were totaled. But at least she was still alive.

Despite our marathon plans being in ruins, the half-filled glasses kept coming. The next day, a virus wiped out my computer. The day after that our main television died. A few days later I lost my flash drive containing a collection of articles that were being delivered for publication.

Having read this story, do you believe these proverbial glasses that kept coming were half-full or half-empty? My race plans were ruined, the house almost burned down, my car was destroyed, the computer was hacked, I had no TV and I spent days re-editing lost articles. But I have heat, the house didn’t burn down, the computer was debugged and I’m still employed in a job that pays enough to buy a new TV. My insurance company gave me a fair price for my totaled car, which allowed me to buy a new replacement. And best of all, my wife is still alive to race another day.

Considering all the facts in context with the bigger picture, I can only conclude that those glasses were actually half-full after all.