Hyperbole... Or Hope?

“We’ve been waiting for this all of our lives!”
“This is the BEST night on television”
“This is the most-awaited match-up in history!”
“You will never see anything like this EVER again!”

C’mon people. Events, people, and products are always touted as the best, the brightest, the sexiest, the most athletic, the miracle we’ve all been looking for. Now, I am as much a slave to mass marketing as anyone, and I get pulled in as easily as the next person, but after a night watching UFC 57 last night, I have to say, enough is enough!

That special cream or at-home treatment will probably not make me look like a well air-brushed super model. I can’t just pop a pill and POOF! have six-pack abdominals or look like Angelina Jolie. And, while the fighting last night was indeed excellent, I am not going to think that nothing will ever succeed in topping it.

Someone once asked me in an interview what the best book I’ve ever read was. I honestly did not have an answer for him. I’ve read so many good ones and I have certain ones I love to revisit again and again, but I’m always looking for another favorite. Can’t it be that way about other things? After all, we as a people once thought that the be-all-end-all of modern technology was a Comodore 64.

As Robert Browning once wrote (and what my A.P. English teacher in high school often quoted as the best line in his best poem), “The best is yet to be.” I truly believe that. Today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better than today. Maybe if we all lived that way and woke up each morning believing that, no matter what has happened in our lives to date, no matter how many great days (or hideous days) we’ve had, the best is yet to be, maybe THEN, we can all live happily ever after.

Thinking that there is a lot more good out there for me and for my loved ones gives me hope for tomorrow and for all the tomorrows we will all enjoy. And that isn’t hyperbole speaking.