I had to change my mind recently. It was not a novel experience, but it is fairly uncommon. I’d like to explain it.

After I retired, I took on more of the cooking and household chores to relieve my wife who is still employed. She is very appreciative, and often when we sit down to eat, she takes a bite or two and then exclaims, “This is the best [insert dish] I’ve ever had.” I laugh and say that she can’t possibly mean it because she has had the dish so many times and may even have said before that it was the best ever.

My reasoning goes like this. In order to claim that something or some experience is the best ever, you must keep ordered lists in your memory of similar past things or experiences, rated and ranked by some criteria that can also be readily applied to other things or ensuing experiences. I admit that there are probably some people who can actually do this. I am not one of them. Nor, I suspect, is my wife. So when she would say that some dish is the best she ever had, I would take it as a compliment framed as hyperbole.

A couple of days ago, my wife made some chicken noodle soup. It had chunks of carrot, celery, and chicken and wide noodles. It was delicious. I said half-mockingly, “This is the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had.” Then it occurred to me that in fact I could not remember ever having had any chicken noodle soup that was better. I realized that what I said was not merely an exaggerated compliment but the truth as far as I could tell. For the first time I realized that my wife might have been completely honest when she said that a dish I had prepared was the best ever, and I began to believe that I had stumbled upon something profound.

In the absence of an ordered list in my memory of past experiences eating chicken noodle soup, the very presence of the experience I was having overwhelmed every memory of prior similar experiences. I was suddenly living in the moment without any memory of other chicken noodle soups. Of course, it was the best I had ever had! I had never had it before. I realized that what I had taken for a somewhat insincere praise might actually have been a very sincere appreciation for an experience that was so satisfying in the moment that it was intrinsically unrepeatable.

This realization led me to wonder if Jesus ever expressed his appreciation for food in a similar manner. I don’t believe Jesus was capable of being in any measure dishonest or insincere, so if he said that something he ate was the best he had ever had, it would certainly have to be because he found the momentary experience so satisfying that it could not be compared with any others. It would have been the best by virtue of being unique.

Of course, the New Testament is silent about whether or how Jesus expressed appreciation for the food he was served. I suppose that in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t really very important. Nevertheless, I feel that I have gained an insight into how being present in the moment leads to more satisfying and fulfilling experiences, and I will no longer say that “best ever” presupposes a ranked list of similar experiences.