“Everything. All of It.”

A short commentary on the power of language

Based on the number of YouTube views, I know I am not alone in loving (or at least watching) the Nate Bargatze Saturday Night Live comedy sketches called “Washington’s Dream.” After the first installment, a commentary on the head-scratching approach of the U.S. to its system of weights & measures (2023), the stand-up-comic issued a part 2 with the SNL staff - this one about words in the English language. In it is a line that makes me smile every time I watch it. The combination of just four words is funny, appropriate, simple, obvious and so expertly delivered.

Here’s the gist:

Bargatze, dressed as George Washington, subtly suggests that his face adorn the front of the new U.S. currency. When a fellow soldier asks what shall decorate the back of the dollar bill, Washington replies, “Everything. All of it.” 

Something about this is just right. Maybe it’s the redundancy, the comic context, the fact that it feels unexpected or the questioning of something ubiquitous that we take for granted. For all the reasons, it makes me happy, and like a song stuck in my head, I repeat it over and over. I find myself searching for situations to try it out, excuses to reference it and ways to work it in to conversation. And now here I am writing about it. 

Language is powerful. 

As writers, as communicators, as humans, we have this ability to choose what, how, when and why we might share something with others. With a package of letters we can deliver gifts, drop bombs, teach, empower, amuse, anger or confuse. We can use our words to express a whole host of emotions, and once delivered, they can incite a whole different host of emotions in return.

This is what writers have to offer - the ability to bring combinations of words into the world in ways that uniquely connect with others. Sometimes it's profound prose, moving poetry, or engaging dialogue and other times it's four simple words delivered in just the right way. This is what language gives us - everything, all of it."