Parable

Half-Empty, Half-Full

A farmer and his wife lived in a green valley outside a small village. They owned a donkey to pull a cart, a cow for milk, and chickens for eggs. When they needed water, the husband hitched the donkey to the cart to draw water from the community well that supplied the village— one large jug for cooking and washing  and a huge barrel for the animals and the garden.

One afternoon, after the farmer finished lunch, his wife told him the water barrel was almost empty and asked him to fetch more water. He trudged to the barrel and looked in. It was half-full. He refused, telling her the barrel didn’t need filling.

With that, his wife became angry. She marched to the water barrel and thrust her arm into the empty space at the top. “No water here! Half-empty!”

Her husband had much longer arms. He reached into the barrel and splashed water. “Half-full!”

Their argument continued into the night and the following day. The woman announced she could prove she was right. She walked to the village and asked the first twenty people she saw to follow her.When they arrived at the farm, she pointed to the barrel and asked how much water it contained.

Some said the barrel was half-empty. Others argued it was half-full. The argument escalated. People asked the mayor and town council to settle the matter by writing a law declaring whether water barrels should be deemed ‘half-full’ or ‘half-empty’ when water reached the half-way mark.

Surely a law would settle the matter. But the mayor and town council couldn’t agree and ended up in a fist fight.

Philosophers and mathematicians began to quibble over the meaning of ‘full’ and ‘empty.’  The great philosopher, Teosophigustus, asked whether any water barrel could ever be considered ‘empty’ when the space inside the barrel not occupied by water was occupied by air. Fellow philosopher Diodibbit replied, “Well, if that is the case, sir, then everything is always full. But if that is true, there are no halves of anything! And if there are no halves of anything, how shall we ever divide a pie?”

People who had been friends for years stopped talking to each other. No one seemed to notice that the village began to look neglected. Life wasn’t as sweet as it had been before they’d started arguing.

One afternoon, a stranger riding a horse stopped at the small farmhouse seeking directions. The farmer asked the stranger to answer a question first. He led the stranger to the barrel. Water had not been added, nor had any been taken away. The farmer asked the well-worn question.

The stranger laughed and did not answer.

The wife announced it was half-empty, hoping the stranger would agree. Her husband urged the stranger to side with him by swooshing water around to show the barrel was half-full. The stranger pointed to the withered garden, noting they had enough water to irrigate it. He peeked inside the empty barn, observing the animals had fled to seek water, even though the barrel held enough to quench their thirst. He looked at the wife, declaring there was sufficient water to take care of the plants and animals, but by concentrating on scarcity, she avoided using what they had and lost everything.

The husband smiled and announced he was right. With this, the stranger disagreed, telling him that his wife prudently planned for their future needs. Adding water to the barrel would have been sensible.

The husband and wife were befuddled by his answer. They persisted in asking who was right. The stranger mounted his horse. How to explain that what they called it— full, empty—made no difference. That water was necessary was all that mattered. Arguing about it had cost them their livelihood and divided the town. The stranger shook the dust off his feet and pointed his horse in a more peaceful direction, leaving them to puzzle over which of them had prevailed.

Valerie L. Egar

Biddeford Journal Tribune