Love of

Love of money is the root of all evil.

— I Timothy 6:10

Googlewhack is a two word phrase that, when entered into the Google search engine, nets one and only one response. This is much more difficult than it seems. I suggest you try it when you have time. Finding a Googlewhack is incredibly frustrating and time consuming. This, of course, only makes the prize shine more brightly. With the discovery of a Googlewhack comes pride. You can revel in the looks of unabashed wonder, awe, respect and envy that are flashed by your peers when they actually Google your phrase and become skeptics no longer. You can bask in your own glory and even bask in the reflected glory of the reflected glory your peers are basking in!!!

But what now? You’ve clearly reached the pinnacle of whatever field Google-searching falls under, but what now? Do you sit in your throne all day, ruling with the scepter of smug superiority? Do you just sit there and wait? No, you can’t. Remaining sedentary and not rocking the G, as Googlewhacking is called in the inner circles, is a luxury that you cannot afford now. There is no off-season for the G rocker. They rock the G 24/7/365.25. If they get cocky and stop rocking the G, invariably some young hotshot will come along, as hotshots are wont to do, and challenge the big dog at the top of the pile.

This makes the full time Googlewhacker an ever vigilant surgeon who is just waiting to slice open the body of the English language and, with the utmost care and precision, extract two words that, when combined, show the greatness of she who unleashed them. If they stop practicing, honing and cutting they will surely lose their edge and their rightful position at the top.

But what of the retired Googlewhacker? What of the person who has achieved such greatness with respect to their peers and decided to leave the game while on top? What of the person who was so focused on one goal, rocking the G like it had never been rocked before, that they ran full speed forward, not noticing the periphery? What happens when the person realizes that their entire life was a mad dash to a goal thought to be all-encompassing but instead was hollow, short and underwhelming? Can she reach back into the depths of his memory from when he was merely rocking the g, note the case, to his retirement and salvage enough of her past to justify her present? Will she be filled with regret at realizing she didn’t enjoy the proverbial ride, or will she delude herself into thinking that what she neglected her husband and children for all those years was truly worth it?

Is being a hotshot G rocker that important? If you rock one G, you’re the new kid on the block. You’re the next Bob Dylan or Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky or Mozart. If you lucked into that first G, you spend the rest of your life looking for the second. You go crazy because you can’t come up with another G, business proposal, closing statement, diagnosis, lesson plan, cleaning solution, et cetera, that was nearly as good as the first. You keep your eyes firmly planted on the prize and, in so doing, convince yourself that you are weak if you stray from the path and that you are a failure if you fall short.

You let your want of the prize distort your perception of its importance. If you stray or fall short, you blame the shortcomings on the prize you coveted to desperately, the prestige granted to the G rocker at the top you wanted so badly to best. You blame the prize for your cheating spouse and chilly-at-best relationship with your children. You go to the grave/urn believing that Googlewhacking and the whole Googlewhacking system is corrupt because, after all, “money is the root of all evil.” In your quest for the G rocking fame, you forget the two most important words of all.