For better or for worse
Here’s a great English expression for you: “For better or for worse.” Let me give you the direct definition and then we can walk through some examples. “For better or for worse” is usually an introduction to a fact and it means, “whether this is good or bad.”
Imagine you have a fact that, from one perspective might be good, but from another perspective might be bad. Before you say that fact, you might want to send your listener a clue that there are both good and bad parts about what’s coming. That’s when you use “for better or for worse.”
Here’s how you heard it in today’s main lesson. For better or for worse, everything is closed on Thanksgiving and you can spend the whole day with your family celebrating the holiday.
This might be good or bad! Why might it be good? Hey, there are 365 days in a year. It’s probably good for us to take just one of those days and spend it home with family, right? That’s good—there’s nothing else competing for your attention and you can spend the day with your family.
Why might it be bad? You might be on a strict fitness regimen and you want to get a workout in. You might run out of fresh coffee beans, as I did on Thanksgiving morning, and you might find your local coffee roaster is closed. It could be your only day off and you have a big home-improvement project and all the hardware stores are closed. Or, you might just not get along with your family!
So, everything is closed on Thanksgiving. That could be good; that could be bad, depending on your point of view. For better or for worse, everything is closed on Thanksgiving and you’ll spend that time with your family.
Have you ever had a tight deadline? A tight deadline is when you have a lot of work to do in a short period of time. The deadline is the day you have to finish. Sometimes deadlines can be flexible. If you’ve promised something on a Friday, you can ask your boss or your client if you can deliver it on Monday. That’s a classic—I’ve done that. They didn’t realistically need it before the weekend!
But sometimes the answer comes back, “no.” The deadline really is the deadline. It is due on Friday. For better or for worse, you have to get it done by 11:59 pm on Friday.
For better or for worse: this may be good or bad. It might be bad because you have a lot of work to do by Friday. You might not get much sleep on Wednesday or Thursday night. You don’t have a lot of flexibility. There’s pressure. It has to get done quickly. But, on the other hand, if you’re done on Friday, you can enjoy the weekend. For better or for worse, the project will be done on Friday.
Sunday morning, the light streaming into your bedroom. Your head is pounding. Oops. You had too much to drink the night before. Would you like to know my one-hundred percent guaranteed hangover cure? Time. For better or for worse, the one and only thing guaranteed to cure your hangover is time. Yes, you can drink water, take an aspirin, have a carb-heavy breakfast, whatever. I find that full-calorie soda helps me personally. But these are just little tips to make it less bad: there’s no cure. The only cure is time, for better or for worse.
Why is it good? Well, you don’t have to go to the doctor; no need for fancy medication. It’s the simplest solution ever: just wait. And it’s 100 percent guaranteed to work. But why is it bad? Well, it’s time! You’re suffering, here! There’s no quick fix. No pill you can take. Waiting is the one thing we often don’t want to do. But it’s easy and guaranteed to work. For better or for worse, the only thing that truly cures a hangover is time.
Quote of the Week
This is a famous, famous quote in English—and a clever one. The author is Oscar Wilde. The quote appears in the novel “Lady Windermere’s Fan.” One character asks, “What is a cynic?” And another character responds: “A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
Now that is a good Black Friday quote. It touches on the difference between price and value. Price is the number of dollars or pounds or pesos or reais or yen that you must spend. Value is what you truly get in return. They are not always the same. Many things that have value don’t have a price at all. Loyalty, kindness, good deeds, a child’s smile, a good friend. These are things that have value but no price. If all you think about are price tags, then you’ll miss out on a lot of the true value—true worth—that life has to offer.
So on this Black Friday, here’s the quote once more—a dialog from Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan”: “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
See you next time!
That’s all today. The fun continues on Thursday, when I’ll give you the back story on “Cyber Monday.” I almost can’t say that without laughing a little. If you’re not sure why I’m chuckling at the idea…well, I’ll explain on Thursday.
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