"But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?
One that goes with him: I love him for his sake;
And yet I know him a notorious liar,
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
Yet these fix’d evils sit so fit in him,
That they take place, when virtue’s steely bones
Look bleak in the cold wind: withal, full oft we see
Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly"
All’s Well that Ends Well (Act I, Scene i)
Why do we exaggerate? When we were children it was almost to be expected. It is fun to watch a small child exaggerate to get their own sweet way. "Mummy, I am going to die if I don't get this..." Exaggeration culminates to a fever pitch by the time we reach puberty. As teenagers we are permitted to go the whole hog, everthing is larger than life when those hormones are running into overtime.
When we are an adult, we are at least taught to be less tolerate about people who exaggerate to get their way. We are told that an exaggeration is a sign of immaturity, or worse an exaggeration is a lie, albeit a simple or perhaps even innocent one, but still a lie.
So why do we do it? To get our sweet way? Is it for the sake of attention? We live in a society where exaggeration is admired. Shock jocks and political junkies hack away at our senses.
The term exaggeration comes from the Latin "exaggeratus" which means to pile up or accumulate. Perhaps we exaggerate because we enjoy piling ideas and stories up high. The drama is entertaining. Perhaps this is why sensationalism in current affairs and news is now becoming the accepted norm not the lunatic fringe.
Exaggeration is everywhere. Our politician's begging for our precious vote, sales people laying out the latest get rich quick, something for nothing dream scheme, our preachers who need heads to bow so their donations can rise, every great poet, actor, director, stripper, decorator, writer or doctor or needs to grab our attention in the noise polluted world we inhabit.
We are surrounded by, confounded by and eventually buried in too much "too much" (exaggeration). We know this is all "idolatrous fancy" but we continue to play with it until we are folly itself. We entertain the exaggerations until we are consumed by them, we are them, we rely on them to keep us entertained.
Eventually we do not know whether we are the source of the exaggeration or its victim. Cold wisdom is sitting on the shoulders of such foolishness. Why freeze our butt off when a dramatic episode of excess emotion warms the cockles of our child like heart?
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