If you look up the word “best” in the dictionary, you will find the following definition “the most excellent, effective, or desirable type or quality.” So naturally, everybody wants that… in every domain. It is everyone’s Holy Grail pursuit.
As the saying goes, “I am too poor to buy cheap stuff” so when I need something, I want to buy a good product… sometimes the best available (if I can afford it). But is there such a thing as “the best?”
After many disappointing queries, I tend to doubt it. When I navigate the internet looking for the best frying pan, for instance, I get plenty of recommendations, but none of the so-called experts seems to agree on which is the “best” product. Lots of lists with all kinds of different rankings, but no consensus. It is not even close. I find this rather strange… If you are the best, everybody should agree that this is so, don’t you think? And if nobody agrees, how can anybody claim to have the best?
In the good old days, you could easily settle this matter with a duel, and with a body lying on the ground, nobody would question who was the best.
I have the feeling that all these so-called “experts” quoted on the internet are probably a bunch of kids (or chimpanzees) on their first professional assignment and throwing darts in the dark. Or maybe it is just the old payola story, financed by shady operators… I would not be surprised… Money talks… softly, but effectively alas.
So how do you track down the elusive “best”? Difficult to say. Some people have tracked the best mate, deal, car, coffee maker, mattress, etc. for years without ever finding it. To succeed, it helps to be lucky, because absolutely nothing beats luck.
“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?” Jean Cocteau
To find the finest, you must test, compare and take plenty of notes. It seems that Zsa Zsa Gabor did so when she married and divorced 9 times before finding her “best mate”.
In 1986 she wed a charlatan named Prinz von Halt (26 years her junior) and the pair stayed together until her death in 2016. To each his own.
Looking for the best of everything could be time-consuming, and if you want perfection, you will have to try harder, many times harder. Good luck my friends.
Alain