Half Full or Half Empty

Sometimes, all we need to motivate ourselves is just to look at life differently because, at the end of the day, all it takes to survive is a good mindset.

The other day, I and my friends were all talking about when we first gained admission into the university and how tough things were for us back then. The conversation got to a point where we all started listing out the things we had to do just to earn money and survive.

And while one of my friends was listing out the menial jobs he did, I couldn't help but think about the whole thing later that evening when I was alone with my thoughts. You see, we all had that conversation to kind of mock our past and mock how much suffering we had to do, but to me, that is looking at the glass half empty.

_{photo by Todd Quackenbush}

I say that because this friend had told us about how he had to work at his uncle's sawmill for a year before going to school and occasionally go there on the weekends just so that he could make some money to eat and buy textbooks, no matter how small it was.

Then he told us about how he also worked at his uncle's poultry and helped in feeding and training the animals there. He said he knew what type of feed to buy, what medicine they needed to be given, and all that. Then, after he graduated, he began to learn how to paint houses through the help of one of our neighbors who is a painter.

He's been working with the guy as a painter for a while now but recently moved into being a bricklayer after they couldn't get a painting job. He's currently working as a bricklayer with some guys that we know, and although he's relatively new at this new job of his, he's learning every day, and I'm sure in no time he'll probably become a pro in that too.

These are four skills he had to learn due to his condition and the situation of things, and while these might not look like high-paying jobs, he's certainly better than most people who don't know how to do anything. And also, one of these pieces of knowledge could come in handy in the near future; it all just depends on where he finds himself.

This is me looking at the glass half full.