To the Best Father, Mother, Food, Son, Daughter, University, City, Country, and other exaggerated generalities.

We just celebrated (I think it’s a celebration) fathers’ day. I was amazed to see so many BESTEST FATHERS all around us. Now I understand that love is not bound to follow logic — but then, the BEST business is literally everywhere…

We love exaggerations. We do it to show our love, establish command, leverage attention and/or serve a cause or a mission.

• Declaring a restaurant as the worst restaurant ever because it somehow missed your taste bud or hurt your customer experience perception…
• Your city as the best city… so much so that taking pride in saying that if you haven’t seen the city, you have not been born.
• Your father as the best father… because it’s the damn Father’s Day.
• Your friend as the best friend as others were smart enough to make better choices :)

Well — I don’t want to take away the emotions part, but this attitude of exaggerated expression reaches to the core of our society.

• When we love a politician, we label his shit as his wisdom…
• When we follow a religious scholar, we park our intellect for some later use…

And so on…

My daughter, in her 2nd year of IB curriculum learned to differentiate between opinion and fact. When I declared a food as the worst thing to eat, she snapped me by telling me how disrespectful I was and confusing my opinion as fact. I was ashamed, and I learned.

I wish we learn it too!

Happy Father’s Day…