It’s All Good and You’re Perfect

Recently I’ve been told that I’m perfect, something I’m perfectly aware I’ve never been nor ever will be.

This generous assessment has come from strangers when I apologize for bumping into them and from the exceedingly cheerful salespeople at the store where my daughter shops for clothes. “No, you’re perfect!” they’ll insist when I explain the need to rest my Gen X weariness on the fitting room floor where a modest “No problem” would have sufficed.

The urge toward pronounced perfection is annoyingly catchy. Almost against my will, I now respond to emails with a knee-jerk “Perfect!” where I once would have said something more in line with the nevermind sensibility of my generation. “Sounds good,” for example, or “OK.”

Even our artificial intelligence exhorts us to greater heights of enthusiasm. To an email in which an acquaintance notes pleasantly, “It was nice seeing you last night,” Gmail suggests a more boisterous reply: “It was great to see you too!” or “So fun!” Our chatbots likewise communicate with endless effervescence, just as we have taught them to do(!).

When not being perfect, we are decidedly good. Should I so much as display a downbeat facial expression when fumbling a social nicety, the response is nothing short of impassioned: “No, you’re good!”

Being good is for everyone. We are all good now that “You’re all good” has replaced both the Commonwealth “No worries” and the American standard “That’s OK.” And it’s not always personal. Frequently, declarations of goodness come in the form of an expansive statement of general excellence: “It’s all good.”