Superlative?

I had always assumed that 'better' was better than 'good' and 'best' was the best of them all. Stands to reason, does it not? I mean, what is being merely 'good' as compared to being the 'best'? (I have said that before? So? What I am about to say is different from what I said before, so there!) After all, positive has just escaped being negative whereas comparative has beaten others at the game. As for superlative...it has beaten everyone, hasn't it?

Or has it? The way things go for me, nothing ever works the way it is supposed to.

There was this time, for example, when my Maths teacher at school was doing that dreaded thing - handing out test results. She called out my name and said those sweet words..."This is your best performance in my tests till date, Suresh". I practically strutted to her and...found that I had still fallen short of the pass percentage by a couple of marks thus discovering that your best can still not be good enough.

Or that other time in the 100m race when I was better by a whisker than this other guy...but the two of us trailed the field by about 50m. Or the time when a classmate was the best athlete from our class but did not qualify for the school team.

All this 'better' and 'best' business is about who or what you are being compared to, it would seem. I mean, yeah, a snail can be the best 'runner' among all snails but it is unlikely that it will compare favourably with a cheetah comes to running speed. You can be the most knowledgeable person on astronomy in your IT firm canteen but would you be good enough for ISRO to consider you a potential astrophysicist? And so it goes...(You will see I am careful not to mention politics or sociology where EVERYONE considers himself not just good but far better than any of the political/social commentators they see on TV)

It would seem that 'good' is not so bad after all. In fact, it could well be better than 'better' and 'best'. So...

Be positive! The comparative and superlative will take care of themselves.