9 Out of 10 Dentists Approve

Approval. An eight-letter word that means so much to us. We want it. We look for it. We bend over backwards to get it sometimes. It's why we look for the number of likes in our social media posts. It's often times why we make some of the decisions we make. We want people's approval. Synonyms for the word include: blessing, favor. We want people to look and say, "Yes! I like it! I love it! You're worth something!"

Unfortunately though, 100% approval can be hard to find in a world with so many different people having so many different opinions and tastes. Not everyone loves the same things or feels the same way about all things. For example, I approve of bananas. I love them. I eat one everyday. I love them in my smoothies. I love them smothered in honey. I love them baked in breads. Call me a monkey and bring on the bananas, people! My husband, Bryan, however, literally gags on them. He physically can not handle the taste and texture of a banana. He's tried. He's actually tried to give them a fair shot because he knows how good they are for us. But at the end of the day, he just can't stomach it - literally. I found this out the hard way when I made him a banana cream pie as a gesture of my affection for him right before we really started dating. I was so excited to show him what I made for him, hoping to win his love and approval for me! But he took one look at the pie and said, "That's a nice looking pie, Valerie. But I hate bananas and I equally can't stand whip cream." AHH! I was so bummed! My whole heart went into making this pie for him. And though he appreciated it, there was literally no way for me to get his absolute approval. Thankfully, our relationship was not based on this one gesture. Phew! We obviously went on to date each other and get married. Oh, and don't worry, the pie wasn't wasted. Another friend (who does love bananas!) and I devoured that pan of goodness!

It's a hard reality for most of us to come to terms with, but it's just the simple truth: no one can please everyone all the time. That's why they have three judges on talent shows. They know the chances of two judges agreeing all the time are slim. So they use the third judge to be the tie-breaker. And we have never heard commercials say, "10 out of 10 dentists recommend our product." Nope. It's always "9 out of 10" because even if they are making up their statistics, they know it would be hard to convince the public that they have won every single dentist's favor. They have to leave room for that 10% who would not approve because that is more believable. 

And no matter how popular a post is on social media, I have never seen only good response emojis on news posts. It could be a report about adorable kittens being born and inevitably you'll see an angry face response. Who knows why. Maybe that person was in a bad mood that day. Maybe they had a bad experience with cats in their life. Maybe they just wanted to be silly and say the opposite of popular opinion. Whatever the reason, it shows us that man's approval is as predictable as a pop-up thunderstorm and we'd be wise to not let it carry too much weight in our lives. That kind of weight only holds us down.