I was advised yesterday by cousin Mary to
enjoy my birthday “without indulging in too much cake”. I replied ‘Please
explain to me the concept of "too much cake", I admit to never having
been a student of philosophy.’
She kindly replied ‘it might be more accurate to
speak of physiology rather than philosophy in this instance! When your
shirt-buttons start popping and you feel you may be "bursting at the
seams", you have certainly had "too much cake"’
I was grateful for the reply but, alas, it
did not satisfy me. The symptoms she described were, in my view, evidence of
clothing of the wrong size or an inadequate metabolism.
Most of us are unable to devote much time
to deep reflection on the essence of existence, being more driven to
concentrate on those activities essential to survival – foraging for
sustenance, getting the required daily 11 hours sleep, correcting errors on
twitter and watching “Only Connect”. However, the current suspension of test
cricket, the IPL and Super Rugby allows me a few moments of reflection.
On a similar theme to the cake conundrum
above, I confess to being troubled by the simplistic “glass half full/half
empty” explanation of the difference between optimists and pessimists (I have
always favoured the third option, that of engineering, which posits the case
that the glass is the wrong size). Facts
of which we are not informed include the size, location and contents of the
receptacle. If one were thirsty and the
glass was to hand and contained some nourishing, thirst-quenching substance,
then it might be safe to say that the position of seeing the glass half full
was an optimistic one. Alternatively, if the glass contained a highly
radioactive substance then the size of the glass and its proximity would be
factors in determining degrees of optimism/pessimism.
It is not in my nature to bemoan the
shortcomings of this creation. I am sure that the next upgrade, or version 2,
will eliminate sweet potatoes, capitalism, carrot cake, reality tv,
misanthropy, the cult of celebrity, racism and Ikea. We should not be too hard
on God for his oversights, particularly if she only had seven days to complete
the task. (This of course raises the troubling question of who it was who was
powerful enough to set ridiculous deadlines that constrained an omnipotent
being – Mary, see what your edict has unearthed?)
I hope that this helps.
