"As you go through life make this your goal:
Watch the donut, not the hole."
Old songs like this are good for teaching certain approaches to life. Look at what you have rather than what you lack. Look at the positive not the negative. I know my glass has always been above half full. It's been filled pretty close to the brim, but never overflowing.
The subject of optimism is not what I wanted to write about. Watching the donut and not the hole is a form of systemic blindness. Most people look only at the obvious "thing" and not the space around that "thing". They look at a silhouette of a black vase and miss seeing the white faces.
When one listens to a politician, one should always listen to what he/she doesn't say as well as what was said. This seems to be impossible since there are an infinite number of things that are left unspoken. One can't take mental notes of all of them. However, there are usually a small number of things that need to be said. Omission of these can speak volumes.
Most people look for certainty in unscientific ways. When they search for proof, they only gather evidence that supports their case rather than searching for alternate or conflicting evidence. I have seen this thought pattern hundreds of times in applicants' answers to a clear thinking problem (one specifically designed to test how the applicant looks to prove a simple assertion). It's not just in religious groups where people value what they know so highly that they never search for ways to disprove it. It pervades our human thought processes and relationships. When people argue and get upset with one another, there are very few people I know who will start out assuming that the other person is completely justified and consistent in their thought processes.
Maybe ignoring the hole is the best way to think. Maybe focusing on the subject is the way to avoid suffering under the weight of unanswered questions. I don't think so. Creative solutions come from people who are prepared to say "What if this solution wasn't available? How would the problem-space look?"
I plan to keep looking at the whole - both the donut and the space it occupies. In life, you need to have some idea where your next donut is coming from.
Not so random problem:
What is the next number in the sequence:
1, 3, 7, 12, 18, 26, 35, 45, 56, 69, ...
