The two-glass metaphor

Evanston RoundTable, June 26, 2024

In high school I hung out with smart kids, smarter than me by far. As a sophomore I’d lunch with a group of seniors who quizzed each other on that day’s New York Times. They were all going to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to study engineering.

As a senior I scored 1226 on my SATs (613 in English and 613 in math), which was OK. But almost all my friends scored well into the 1300s.

I didn’t mind being the dumbest kid in every group. The smarties were fun to be with and I learned a lot from them.

Later in life I learned about multiple intelligences. You can be smart in some ways – like taking tests – but not so smart in others – like getting along with people. In fact, you can be the smartest person in the room and still squander all that intelligence through laziness, inertia or indifference.

To illustrate the point I came up with a sort of thought experiment involving two drinking glasses. Imagine being born with the proverbial glass half full – an average intelligence – while someone else is born with the glass almost topped off, a genius.

It may seem daunting and unfair to compete with the glass-full people. But the thing to remember is it’s not how much skill, talent and smarts you’re born with. It’s what you do with those gifts. You may make use of every drop of your half-full glass, while your neighbor dribbles his good fortune away.

It’s corny, I know, the two-glass metaphor.

But it suggests something important, the big question, one I ask myself more and more as I approach my ninth decade, namely: What are we making of our gifts, whether a half glass or whole? Are we working close to full capacity – continually open to learning, helping others and moving the world to a better place, even if it’s just an inch at a time?

If so, that might make us the smartest person around.