There was this riddle I remember as a kid that really stuck with me for some reason:
“If a hole is ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, how big is half a hole?”
Answer: there’s no such thing as half a hole.
I think I found it clever because it really got me – I had spent a while trying to puzzle out if the question wanted me to say “five feet by five feet by five feet” or “ten by ten by five” or actually figure out what each dimension would be in order for them to all be the same but still halve the volume or what (it was roughly 7.94 feet cubed or something). So when I read the answer it was like getting knocked in the head, and it made me laugh.
Because it’s true! There’s no such thing as half a hole. If you have a hole in a boat and you patch up one side of it, the boat still sinks.
You can’t jump halfway off a cliff. You can’t dig half a hole. You can’t solve half a problem.
Some things truly are “all or nothing.”
The Opportunity Machine 