Is “as good as it gets” the most demotivating phrase ever conceived?
In the English language, there are many phrases and figures of speech that can have multiple meanings depending on context and connotation. “Fits like a glove” can be a compliment for good parking as well as a cheeky comment for someone who is too big for a dress. “Break a leg” is a figure of speech used to wish someone the best for something they are about to do, but it could be equally effective as a quip about someone’s ineptitude.
There is one figure of speech though that can take the wind out of anyone’s sails, regardless of the context and connotation. “As good as it gets” is a figure of speech can spell the end of hope and hopefulness. There is an emotion of negativity associated with it which cannot be shaken off if one is convinced of its negativity. The phrase can have such an overpowering effect that it can push certain people in to a shell for the rest of their lives.
In many literary works in the past, the phrase has been used to signal the end of a character’s (or situation’s) end of being hopeful and grappling (successfully or unsuccessfully) with the circumstance that they find themselves in. The phrase can be a proverbial “full stop” on the hopes and ambitions of anyone who wants to improve or get better.
When one is dealt such a hammer blow, one is forced to transform, forced to adapt. While an optimist might see this as a chance to embrace the end of something and the beginning of something new, a pessimist will look at this as the end of whatever they had pursued thus far with nothing better to come. That being said, the point-of-view of the optimist can be an exception to the all-encompassing negativity associated with the phrase. Lets look at an example.
In the graphic novel and the film called “28 Days Later”, there is an embodiment of this phrase throughout the narrative and the surrounding elements. England has been overrun by a virus that turns humans into flesh eating zombies. These zombies are fast and they don’t desire anything other than non infected humans to consume or convert into zombies. All they want is to hunt down the remaining humans and consume them. The few humans who remain conceive fleeting plans of survival and try to live to see the sunrise of the next day.
Danny Boyle, in the film, treats the subject with his trademark slick style and dynamism. He revolves his art piece around the story of Selena and Jim, two survivors who do not give up and keep fighting every day . They travel across London and Manchester , trying to find a safe abode where they could be free from the zombies. Along their journey they pick up other survivors but all of them, apart from one, falls prey to these savage predators.
The underlying philosophy of the film is that the human instinct of survival is strong, but it is also constantly questioning whether it is worth it. The characters run and hide throughout the story, all in the hope that the situation for them will get better.
Somewhere during the film, Selena, a survivor who now lives for others as much as she lives for herself, says to Jim that she used to be a hard nosed orthodox thinker who had little tolerance for anything outside of her own expectations. Just before the outbreak of the virus happened, she had a moment of clarity, where she could see that her obstinate nature had defined everything for her, and all was in a state of “as good as it gets”.
When she lost her husband to the virus and subsequently everyone else who mattered to her, a new reality took over her life. She now had to move quickly and understand how to trust and be wary of strangers. She had moved out of her comfort zone. Instead of giving into the predators and turning into one of them, she decided to survive and keep moving. She confides this in Jim. She sees her past perspective on things as a degenerative way of thinking and associates her loss to the start of a new opportunity, a new perspective (Read: The optimist point of view).
She helps Jim, the other central character, find his parents. When they reach the home of his parents, they find the 2 of them dead. They hadn’t died because of the zombies. They had shot themselves to death, believing that this was as good as it got for them. While Jim cries and mourns, Selena reminds him that it was a better way to die than at the hands of the savage zombies. This is another positive connotation associated with the phrase.
By the end of the film, Selena, Jim and Hannah (the 3rd survivor) find a way to fight off the advances of the enemy, both zombie and human. They did not surrender their lives to the monsters that hunted them. In other words, they had rejected the idea that dying at their own hands, rather than the zombie’s, was as good as it got for them.
The phrase “as good as it gets” can spell the end of hope for the pessimist. It can be the marker of something new for a optimist. Either way, it is fair to say that the phrase does tread that grey area between hope and despair. In the end, it comes down to the person who says it, hears it, feels it or experiences it to decide what it means to them.
