Hyperbole has long been a part
of human nature; our need to impress others with the import of something
indelibly permeates our narratives: the
size of the fish that got away, the extent of the damage the other guy
sustained from the fight we were in, and so on. But things have gotten out of
hand. Way out of hand. Totally.
We live in a world of casual,
ubiquitous superlatives and their pernicious relatives. You can’t just have a good time; it has to be
the best time. You can’t just say a movie was good; it has to be epic.
You can’t even just have good sex; it’s has to be amazing sex. Even
Taylor Swift is never, ever, ever, ever getting back together again. Like ever.
When did our need to embellish
get out of control? Is it a result of external forces like advertising and
marketing bombarding our lives with constant competition and one-upmanship? Or
is it a natural evolution of a need to infuse value and meaning into our lives
to stave off the perception that--as the population grows and our Facebook
posts and tweets are buried in more of the same—our worth somehow diminishes in
our own eyes and the eyes of those around us?
In either case, I say stop the
madness! Making everything the ultimate experience only diminishes the
experience in the end: if everything is
“the best”, then nothing is, because “the best” no longer exists; it’s a
self-defeating dynamic. So all the embellishments and exaggerations become
white noise and no one believes them. In fact, that has already begun: we
already know you didn’t have “the best time ever”. So why say it?
Let a nice time be had by all
and let it be appreciated as such, without the need to turn it into the event
of the decade. Let a movie be a pleasant way to pass the time, without making
it into a life-changing experience. And while I wish everyone be blessed with amazing
sex at least once, be happy to just get some.
We can take back control of our
language and our sense of self-worth by focusing on our own truth, our own appreciation
of that truth and the honest expression of the experiences of our lives. If we
can manage that, I think it would be, in a word, superlative.
