We think in pictures. We imagine actions and concepts and—both verbally and in writing—we express our thoughts with words. For most people, words represent sounds that are associated with specific things, ideas, concepts, actions, and feelings. Deaf people make word associations differently, yet effectively.  Depending on how they are used, words can convey a full range of human experience and emotions. We use words to communicate with each other and, therefore, to exist and live well with each other. Without words it would be more difficult for human social units to survive, let alone thrive. So, all things considered, words are powerful things. Or at least they used to be.

For example, there was a time when the word “awesome” conveyed a really powerful idea. It was reserved for an event or a concept having to do with the Creator or creation or something in that realm—something far beyond our ability to comprehend. There are about 200 billion stars in our galaxy. That is awesome. But now it is also quite common to hear somebody say, “Your new shoes are awesome!”

Of course, if everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. If someone’s new hairstyle is awesome, or a bases-loaded home run is awesome, what word could we use to describe a front row view of the birth of a new star?

Words mean something. Thankfully, that will seem like a laughably obvious statement to some, but it has become alarmingly apparent that among a very large segment of our population, human evolution has slipped on some kind of Darwinian banana peel. Acknowledging that language is a core essential component of things that set us apart from our closest relative, the chimp, and its devolution among so many of us, we have a problem—at least here in America.

We have somehow morphed into a culture of hyperbolic virtual reality. More than once, I have heard people expound on the proposition that mere perception is as honest and utilitarian as fact-based reality. In other words, a make-believe world will serve the human race just as well as the real, actual world.

So, the next time you step off a curb into oncoming traffic, don’t worry, just make believe that the big truck, which is about to run over you and kill you, is really a caressing puff of loving, aromatic air that will make you feel warm and fuzzy all over. Oops, too late! You can’t imagine anything; you’re dead!

Awesome!