Off The Cuff: Ying and Yang, is the cup half full or half empty?

Is the cup half full or half empty when it reaches the midway mark? The optimist would say half full. The pessimist would declare it half empty. The pragmatist would say neither. The existentialist would say: who cares anyway?

It's all a matter of personal viewpoint. Me, I'm an incorrigible optimist, approaching impending disaster with the sunny resignation of Dickens' Mr Micawber and his eternal conviction that "something will turn up".

And it usually does.

The apex of optimism must have been reached by the comedian Graham Chapman, of Monty Python's Flying Circus fame. The music he chose for his funeral was the happy ditty Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, and all the mourners were expected to sing along.

I suppose most of the great achievements of history were initiated by supreme optimists...

"Trust me, Orville, this thing is as safe as houses, of course it can fly."

"OK Hannibal, I want you to take some livestock over a couple of hills, you should be back by teatime.

The Trojans after the siege: "Look the silly blighters have gone off and forgotten one of their horses, let's grab it quick."

"Hi Leonardo, could you do a little patch up job in the Sistine Chapel roof for us?"

Nevertheless, one cannot help but wonder how events would have turned out if destiny had been left in the hands of the other lot. You know the other lot the ones who think the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train.

For instance, Rudyard Kipling's pessimistic alter ego might have written: "If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs, then you haven't fully appreciated the gravity of the situation."

And William Shakespeare's immortal line in Julius Caesar might have read: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, is likely to leave you with very wet feet and you could catch your death of cold."

Then there was Scarlett O'Hara's famous scene closer in Gone with the Wind: "And after all, tomorrow is another day ... yes, another day of drudgery, debts, bickering relatives, sometimes I feel like just packing it all in!"

Sir Edmund Hillary to Sherpa Tenzing: "What? Up there ... Me? You've got to be kidding!"

I have a relative who is so alarmist that he has virtually built his home around the burglar alarm system. He is the proverbial Voice of Doom.

Every innocent suggestion, such as a trip in the car, is met with a sucking in of the cheeks and a sombre furrowing of the eyebrows, and the grim warning: "That's a very dangerous road."

On being told we were planning a holiday to a Greek island he mournfully intoned: "You'll get killed by hill bandits!" The only bandits we found were behind cash registers.

He never travels without an umbrella, and is an insurance salesman's dream. Not for him the rosy path of wishful thinking, the charmed conviction that every time a door closes a window opens. Instead, his is the road to the doomsday scenario even in the minutiae of life. The fervent belief that behind every silver lining lies a dark cloud.

It's Ying and Yang, black and white.

So what do you say? Is the cup half full or half empty?

Alexander Lindsay is a Dubai-based writer.