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As Einstein said, “Everything is relative.” Published in 1905, Einstein’s theories were revolutionary, and are still much cause for speculation, confirmation, and consternation among his fellow scientists. There is no questioning the absolute brilliance of Einstein’s work, or his ability for abstract and obtuse thought, but, as a scientist, I question one thing about Einstein— was Einstein’s universe half empty or half full?
I have my own theory about this half empty/half full perspective. To me, it seems that certain careers or “fields of study” lend themselves to a more pessimistic attitude toward life in general. Let’s face it; if one constantly predicts gloom and doom, one will be smack dab right on the money about half of the time. Or, perhaps, one could be right smack dab on the money, 100% of the time, given a specific viewpoint where good is bad and bad is bad.
Take Hermann Schenkle, for instance. Mr. Schenkle was Grandpa’s friend of long acquaintance who farmed land near Grandpa’s boyhood home. Every week, Grandma, Grandpa, and I traveled to Hawesville to purchase farm fresh country eggs, freshly churned butter, and produce from Mr. Schenkle and his lovely wife, Carmen. Mr. Schenkle was a dour German whose farm was run with the precision of a clock. His cattle were sleek, well-fed, and white, no variation allowed. Mr. Schenkle’s wheat was perfectly spaced, one wheat plant per square inch, and his corn stood straight in long, tall rows, like soldiers.
Mr. Schenkle’s crops were as good as an investment in a savings bond. He put his money in, and in the fall, he withdrew his money, with substantial interest. Mr. Schenkle’s fat, contented chickens were blindingly white, and they had rows upon rows of whitewashed nests filled with clean straw upon which to obediently lay their one egg per day. Mr. Schenkle painted the trunks of his trees white, his barns were painted white, his fields were neatly tucked in around the edges, and the farm reflected modern and progressive agricultural practices. Everything on the farm pointed to a well-oiled, profitable, agricultural enterprise, but Mr. Schenkle was not happy.
I sometimes followed Grandpa, as he and Mr. Schenkle discussed the farm. Mr. Schenkle was a tall, thin man, whose overalls hung loosely on his frame. His white shirt was neatly starched and ironed, and his white straw hat was placed firmly on his head. “Ed, I tell you, this farmingk busssinesss iss no goot these days!” Mr. Schenkle would exclaim, shaking his head. (Mr. Schenkle had been a prisoner of war in WWI, and had come to America, because, “if they can pay their prissonerss of war, it iss a rich country!”) As Grandpa and Mr. Schenkle inspected the farm, Mr. Schenkle seemed to carry a dark burden in his pocket...
“Hermann, all of your cows have given births to twins, tripling the size of your herd! That sounds pretty good to me!” Grandpa said, encouragingly. Grandpa spared me a glance of pure glee—one visit with Mr. Schenkle provided a week’s worth of humor, at least.
“It meanss lesss milk to sell, Ed! Too many mouthss to feed! Yess, feeding all these calvess drivess the up cosst of feed,” he said, disgusted, his hands on his hips in dismay.
“Hermann, all your hens lay double-yolked eggs, every day. You should be making a fortune!” Grandpa said, pointing to the yard of fat, contented chickens pecking at their grain.
“A heavy lay makess the henss weak, Ed... Can’t be too careful what you feed those chickenss! They could get an illnesss, and wipe out the whole flock!” Mr. Schenkle kicked the feed trough sullenly, shaking his head.
“But, Hermann, your wheat crop produces about a bushel per foot! Same with that corn! That should be some nice profits there,” Grandpa said, noting the vast fields of lush green wheat, the strong sentinel corn plants.
“Takess a lot of fertiliszer to make those crops grow, Ed,” Mr. Schenkel said. “A good crop drivess the price of grainss down, too.”
Finally, Grandpa would shake his head, wink at me, and we would mosey up to the house to collect Grandma, who had a gallon bucket of double-yolked eggs, a box of fresh produce, and a huge smile on her face from her visit with Carmen, Mr. Schenkle’s jolly, cookie-jar shaped, Italian wife. Carmen danced as she hung the laundry on the line, sang “Funiculi, funicula” as she ironed, and, kept a bright, tidy house with red checked curtains edged in lace. When Mr. Schenkle came to the back door, she always exclaimed, “There’s thata man of mine!” and danced to meet him, her stomachs and chins bouncing with joy. Mr. Schenkle’s dour face would light up, and he smiled tightly, “Carmen! You’re chusst a skylark thiss morning!” I guess that Carmen was the only thing that Mr. Schenkle thought he had to smile about.
Carmen felt that her life was filled with riches! Up by the house, the birds sang brightly, the flowers bloomed profusely, and the days rang with laughter and joy. Carmen always added a touch of lace, here and there, to her brightly patterned clothing and furniture, and her days were filled with sunshine. She had plenty of food, plenty of money for her needs, a nice, warm house to keep, and her Mr. Schenkle to love. Mr. Schenkle would say, “I chusst don’t know about thiss farmingk busssinesss,” and Carmen would laugh and say, “Oh, thata man of mine! Now he seesa the dark side of the business!”
How could these people live together on the same farm and see the same thing so differently? Simple, it is all relative. Mr. Schenkle’s glass was always half empty, and Carmen’s glass was always half full.
As yet another fine example, let’s look at Mr. Veedermann, the economist/accountant hired by my engineering firm, about half-way through my tenure there. I had always prided myself on “bringing a successful project in” on time and under budget, but with the addition of Mr. Veedermann, a dark cloud settled over the office. Suddenly, the money we didn’t charge was labeled as “lost profits”.
“I purposefully overbid the contract, Mr. Veedermann, so that we could make a profit, and get the job done under budget!” I explained, when called on the carpet for leaving $1000 on the table on my water supply development project. “That way, they may hire us to design the water treatment plant.”
“Lost profit! Every dollar you leave on the table is lost to us! I’ll take that out of your marketing budget!” he harrumphed.
“But it isn’t money that we spent on marketing, Mr. Veedermann. The job made a profit of a 2.4 multiplier! The job was profitable!” I exclaimed in disbelief. “We made 240% profit on the job. Our company standard is 220%!”
“Harrumph! Lost profit is lost profit! You could have made more profit!” he glared at me in disgust. “I have to answer to our shareholders! I have a fiduciary responsibility!”
“But sir, can we calculate how much a higher percentage that $1000 would have made us in profit?” I asked in despair.
He fiddled with his calculator, and said, “The data isn’t available at this time! Just make your projects come in, to the penny! Do you hear me? To. The. Penny.” He glared at me, as if to make sure I understood exactly what he was saying. He looked at me, significantly, “Your job could depend on it.”
At my desk, I calculated what difference the $1000 would have made. It came to a total of 0.005 on the multiplier. About half of a percent. It was at this point, that scientists and economists diverge, at least in my book. I had worked very hard, standing and sweating outside in a cornfield, test drilling in the August heat, balancing the geologic realities with the costs of drilling to bring in a water well of sufficient quantity to meet the city’s needs. And this guy cares only about the 0.5% we didn’t charge? Did anyone bother to calculate the degree of goodwill I had left with my satisfied client? Did anyone bother to calculate the odds of finding a ding dang water supply way out in the middle of nowhere with no data and just a hunch? What was an additional $1000? Another 40 feet of drilling? A few bags of mud? My blood began to boil, and in the handwriting on the wall, I could see the end of my term of employment with this company.
It is the same thing today. Remember when prices went up about 20% because gas prices went up 250%? After the cost of gas went down, but the prices of goods in the stores remained 20% higher, the economists wailed and moaned about “sticky prices”. Yep, “sticky prices” are really bad for the economy, in general. Then, as prices dropped just a bit, they wailed and moaned about “de-flation” and how that is bad for the economy. Folks, you can’t have it both ways. But, I guess that is all relative, too. Unfortunately, to these guys, no matter what happens, it is bad for the economy. Their glass is definitely half empty.
As a last, prime example, TV preachers are never happy, either. One would think that being paid to stand up and holler at people would at least allow them to diffuse a certain measure of hostility captured within their souls, but, no. It doesn’t seem to work that way.
We had this preacher in my hometown that began his television career as a real ‘fire-eating’ Baptist, as Grandma used to call them. (Of course, any denomination has their own brand of ‘fire-eaters’, but he happened to start off life as a Baptist.) He got a spot on the early Sunday morning local television station, which aired before the Kentucky Educational Television was turned on, because the TV station would not air educational TV about science on Sunday.
He was on air very early in the morning. I often heard him ‘calling hogs’, as Grandpa used to say, as I dressed for church. I could hear him in the background screaming, “Go-uhd is lo-uhve. That’s right, you heard me this morning-- Go-uhd is lo-uhve.” Shortly thereafter, “Go-uhd will burn you in the fires of Hay-ull, if you don’t repent of your sins and accept the lyefe everlastin’!”
Then, one Sunday morning, he saw the ‘lyeght’ himself. Oh my, the hooting and hollering that was going on! I went in and turned up the TV, just to witness what I thought must be a riot on local TV... He was beating the pulpit with his hands, “I see the lyeght! I see the lyeght of Jee-sus!” He raised his hands to the heavens and spot light came on his face, as if to illustrate his inner light. Unfortunately the spotlight was a blue one, so he appeared to be suffering from incipient thrombosis. I watched in fascination.
“It is the lyeght! The lyeght of Go-uhd!” At this precise moment, a large bug landed on his pulpit. With nary a pause in his tirade-- ‘my seeing the lyeght with Jee-sus’ eyes should make all you sinnuhs reepeeuhnt’-- he pounded the bug to a messy pulp. I don’t know who was operating the camera that morning, but the camera focused in on the crushed body of a grasshopper, rather than the Pastor’s blue face.
“That’s ryeght; I say Jee-sus has spoken to me, and only to me! All sinnuhs must reepeeuhnt, or face the fiery bowels of Hay-ull!” The volume increased and suddenly the camera was jerked away to focus in on the Pastor’s face, turning purple in his rage and glory, the spotlight having been extinguished.
The following Wednesday, I read in the local newspaper, that the good Pastor had filed a lawsuit against the local TV station for “Violation of the First Amendment, Breach of Contract, Dereliction of Duty, Inflammatory Editing, and Sinful Representation of God’s Love”, proving that anyone can sue anybody for anything—it doesn’t even have to be a law. In addition, the good Pastor was collecting money for his ‘defense’, had begun a new Evangelical Mission, and was going to build a new a new church where land was cheap.
The Pastor’s show was not a part of the following Sunday’s line-up. Instead, the picture of a stained glass window was shown, with organ hymns played for sound. As the organ played an operatic, “How Great Thou Art”, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony...
Word had it that the Pastor was collecting money “all over town” and had raised a sizable sum of goodwill from the local population. Bits and pieces of information drifted through the local grapevine like driftwood from the sea. The Pastor had already collected $40,000 for his ‘defense fund’, and was looking at building sites.
The next Sunday, the Pastor’s program was replaced by the Reverend Allgood’s sermon that was, in contrast, a soothing, peaceful homily about loving one’s neighbor. More information drifted my way, that the Pastor had placed a down payment on a nice spot of land off Carter Road, out by the airport, and that the airport had told him, no, he could not put up his own TV tower, as it would interfere with the landing of airplanes. The Pastor’s defense fund had reached phenomenal proportions, as many of the citizen’s of the city gladly contributed to his good works. The Pastor immediately filed suit against the airport for Censorship, First Amendment Rights, Dereliction of Duty, etc. Same old, same old.
Two weeks later, I received a notice stuck in my door. I came home from work, found it, and went inside to open it. BLAM! I was blasted into Sunday morning’s service with all the force of a maelstrom! The top of the bill, printed on bile-yellow paper, showed a picture of the Pastor, his finger pointing outward, as in “Uncle Sam wants YOU.” But, while Uncle Sam has a firm, yet pleasant expression, the Pastor looked to be very angry and accusatory about something. The rest of the bill read, in part:
If you are against fornication, flagellation, copulation, lipstick, Darwinism, communism, lying of public officials, playing cards, orgies, drug paraphernalia sold in gas stations, THE DEVIL, pornography, child molestation, the de-sanctifying of the holy spirit, dancing, gambling, massage parlors, prostitution, the use of God’s house to play BINGO, the serving of alcoholic beverages, eating un-healthy foods, lascivious magazines, cigarettes, wild women, motorcycles, HELL’S ANGELS, evil influences on the public, bribery, usury, espionage, short skirts, incest, sensationalism, the mixing of races, makeup, the use of sexual devices, robbery, soft drinks, the US Postal Service, the ingestion of caffeinated substances, musical instruments made of animal parts, plagiarism, sexualization of children’s television programs, homosexuality, bestiality, the worship of false gods, etc....
It was one solid page, and at the bottom, it read, “You Must Attend a Tent Revival if you want to SAVE YOUR SOUL”. I tossed it. Both of my dear grandparent’s would have approved of my filing system, wholeheartedly.
After the Tent Revival, the Pastor had amassed $400,000. His church was a reality, his congregation having donated all of their personal jewelry, even their wedding bands, during a final push for funds. Eventually, his lawsuit with the TV station was settled out of court for a tidy sum, the FAA told him in stern ‘legal-ese’ to go suck eggs, his church was booming, and his personal funds had increased to the tune of a brand new Mercedes Bend in the driveway of his new, $150,000 home, (which was a mansion, back then). Daddy called the Pastor’s new place of worship the “EvanGELical Church of the Holy Schmoley”, and, as he remained un-smitten by lightning in his cheerful defiance, I reckoned that God didn’t mind.
Was he happy with his new-found funds? Nope. The Pastor took to his bed, in a heap of worry over the restaurant, Pinochle’s, which hired the mentally and physically disabled to give them a job and spending money at the care center. The owners of Pinochle’s were obviously sinners, if they hired the “mentally and morally deficient, can’t-even-walk, wheelchair-bound sinners.” His congregants picketed the restaurant, and I took a perverse pleasure in taking my friends there to lunch.
In my mind, this fellow represented all the sad-eyed farmers who rolled in the dough and wallowed in misery, the economist/accountants who put profit before honest business practices, and every ‘hog caller’ that exhorted the masses with feelings of fear and guilt. To me, it was all out war. I went to Pinochle’s every day for lunch and added $5 to their tip jar, in addition to the 20% I left for a tip. I often ran into Daddy at the restaurant, eating a tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat toast. Eventually, the city folk got tired of him, and he was run out of town on a rail, so to speak, waving his fists before the camera, exhorting his victims to “Reepeeuhnt of their seeuhns”, and vanished into oblivion down the road a piece.
My point is this—Einstein is right. It’s all relative. Some people will never be happy, no matter what happens. A good attitude can make one’s life a lot happier, and more content with what is right there on your plate. Good business is a lot more than just profits. Lastly, fear and guilt may line your pocket for awhile, but eventually, people get tired of being told how bad things are, and want some “happy” injected into the equation.
But then, my glass is half-full.
Thanks for coming by!
