I grew up with academic training in science and engineering. In such academic cultures, there’s an emphasis on precision. For good reason.

This emphasis on precision extends to speech. So as an adolescent, if I ever had a desire to label an experience or a person as the “most ____”, my mind would immediately go into verification mode. Is this person truly the “most ____”? Have I had an experience in the past which was “more ___” than this one? This tendency comes purely from the engineer inside me and would often take me out of the moment of the experience itself.

Devotional hymns are full of such hyperboles. I’ve come to realize that these hyperboles are precise, but not in the way my logical mind views precision. They are precise in the sense that there is an implicit acknowledgment that language falls short to convey the depth of emotion that gives rise to such devotional hyperboles. Sometimes this acknowledgment is conscious in the devotee’s mind. Sometimes it isn’t. But it doesn’t really matter. The hyperbole itself is doing justice to the inability of language to capture the fullness of the emotion by using the most extreme form of the language in expressing devotion to a deity.

I write this with the sweetest little baby cat cocooned in my lap 😸 Hyperbolically speaking 😉

Pictured a graduate engineer arguing against Hanuman, the Hindu deity representing devotion.

(Credit to a lover partner from the past for helping me see this)