An apple, a banana, and a baseball cap.
🍎🍌🧢

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I arrive at the wedding venue super early.

My preference, always, is to arrive early, find the couple, and let them see that I’m on site.

(It usually calms them down.)

But, today, I’m super, super early.
The couple haven’t even arrived yet.

“You the photographer?” I ask a man pulling a camera harness and other equipment out of his car.

“Yup,” he says as he motions towards his head. “You must be the rabbi.”

“I’m Brian. Rabbi Brian.”

“Mark. Photographer Mark.”

He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, and offers me one.

“I don’t know why people say cigarrettes are bad for you,” he says. “They make me quite happy.”

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Think about an apple, a banana, and a baseball cap. 
🍎🍌🧢

Imagine I ask you to rank these three unequal items.

You’d find the task difficult because without criteria against which they are to be evaluated, the items cannot be ranked — there is no inherent hierarchy between them.

But worst, good, and best can be discerned if I tell you to evaluate the three: based on price, closest to the letter D, or sun-blocking ability.

With criterion, winners and losers appear.

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Mom and I are standing in the kitchen. I’ve poured myself a bowl of raisin bran, added half-moon slices of banana, and am pouring Califa Farms Extra-Creamy Oat milk on top.

I tell her, “This Oat milk is the best I’ve ever had.”

<https://www.califiafarms.com/products/extra-creamy-oatmilk/>

I’m judging it based on the fact that I literally cannot distinguish it from whole milk.

She opens the fridge, pulls out the purple half-gallon of fat-free Lactaid—her favorite— holds it next to mine, and says, “My milk is better—it has more calcium.”

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Worst, good, and best depend on what criterion you use to make your evaluation.

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Is the rest of your day going to be a good day?

Depends against what criteria you make your evaluation, right?