The Obsession of Superlatives

Let me start outright by apologizing for the inactivity on the blog, as pointed by a few special people now with some sharp questions "You didn't write anything last weekend". I would say..A bit of laziness, a bit of busy schedule and largely responsible is the reading activity resumed over the long weekend. I’m not much of a reader, but get stuck onto a few things which I find interesting, sometimes. For last few days, I have been thinking and observing mental activity and obsessions!

With the type of industry I work in, people here are more obsessed than being passionate. The route we take to the office should be the quickest. Our turnaround time should be fastest. The quality of code should be best and what not. I stuck with the thought of this  obsession and rat race with the perspective of life - Why do we always want the best?  The advertisements always stress upon the superlatives in the articulately constructed product descriptions. The biggest space, widest range of products, largest superstore, strongest adhesive, tastiest burgers and the list goes on. We want the fastest machines. We want the best seat in the bus, train or flight. We want the best view of the sea during holidays. 

Even Most magazines and newspapers come up the articles titles as  "Best Italian Sauce","How to Brew Perfect Coffee", "Best MBA schools" or "Super Model for September". The stock markets and in nearly every discussion of business, there's an assumption that if you can't be the market leader in your niche, you're a failure.

We want to be the most different in the crowd. But we forget the very basic fact of nature - every one is different. Everyone is special. Again trying to generalize out of special cases, we have constructed statistics of measurements. Uffff, Measurement of anything and everything is so important to humans. We always want to know the progress. Let’s say, if I were to ask any of my cousin their academic progress I would ask the rank in the class. Despite of knowing that academic systems of most of the countries do not test real talent, I do it - subconsciously. Many people without any formal degrees are live examples of the failure of the education system as a whole - globally. Why do we always want the best? 

We all know what the destination of the journey of life is, death. Its about enjoying the ride isnt it. But its still a race, and we still want to be first. This is a never ending process, recurring in many different shapes and sizes throughout our day.

But I see little differently here..The thing is that I don't think that number 1 is necessarily the optimal place to be always. Let me point out an example..Each time in IT, a question pops up, Am I the best software developer? My answer is - I'm not the world's best software developer. However, I believe my track record points to me being a *good* software consultant. Because I am not killing myself in pursuit of being good enough that the entire software world beats a path to my door, I have time to write, play music, draw and enjoy spending time with my family. 

It's a pretty good balance as far as I'm concerned. It may not be for everyone, but I think the obsession with the superlative is just hollow to me.

Its up to you, how you take it. Are you obsessed with superlatives ?