There are certain words which have been rendered virtually meaningless through over-use.<\/p>\n
Take the word \u201cawesome\u201d for example. I was recently in a restaurant where I overheard a waitress ask a nearby patron how he was enjoying his eggs. His response? \u201cThese eggs are AWESOME!\u201d<\/p>\n
With delightful understatement the waitress replied, \u201cGee. They\u2019re just eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n
How can we describe a glorious, radiant sunrise as \u201cawesome\u201d when the same word is now used with equal reverence to describe Denny\u2019s Grand Slam breakfast?<\/p>\n
Another word perilously close to being dumped onto the scrapheap of irrelevance is the word \u201cridiculous\u201d. At one time this handy little term could be used to effectively describe the most inane, preposterous or utterly bizarre happenings in our lives and in our world.<\/p>\n
No more.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s world of entitlement we have hijacked this useful adjective, and have relegated it to reference the most trivial of personal inconveniences. And as a result, the word is close to being laughably inconsequential.<\/p>\n
![\"line](\"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/line_up-300x198.jpg\" "\\"line")
Case in point. Several months ago I found myself in a line-up several blocks long, waiting along with hundreds of others to renew my passport. News reports at the time had prepared us to expect waits of up to five hours or more, so it was that I arrived with a folding chair and a book and settled in for this half-day wait.<\/p>\n
Soon, however, the relative tranquility of this otherwise uneventful morning was shattered by a rising chorus emanating from those both in front and behind me in line.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking us wait this long in line is RIDICULOUS!\u201d bellowed one.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely RIDICULOUS!\u201d repeated another.<\/p>\n
Soon the chant was being picked up by those up and down the line with Gregorian-like metre; \u201cRidiculous! Ridiculous!\u201d<\/p>\n
My enchantment with this rising chorus of indignation was broken when I noticed a reporter from a local newspaper asking the scowling mob in front of me what they felt about having to wait so long in this line. Their answer was as predictable as it was somehow sublime. \u201cRIDICULOUS!\u201d they huffed in unison.<\/p>\n
Next the reporter turned and put the same question to me. \u201cHow do I feel about waiting in this line?\u201d Unfortunately, what neither the reporter nor my enraged line-mates could know was that I had just returned from an eye-opening trip to South Africa, and my experiences there had irrevocably impacted my view of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201c25 million people are dying of AIDS in Africa,\u201d I began. \u201cThat\u2019s a big problem.\u201d Then nodding towards the line up in front of me I added, \u201cThis line-up really isn\u2019t a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
In sharing this story with you I\u2019m not sure I even have a profound point to make. Except, perhaps to remind each of us that when we find ourselves using the word \u201cridiculous\u201d to describe a traffic snarl, a flight delay, or even a change-resistant congregation, we might do well to consider a broader perspective. It may well be that there are others in the world whose plight is even more dire than our present irritations.<\/p>\n
If we would all remember that\u2026I think that would be just AWESOME!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are certain words which have been rendered virtually meaningless through over-use. Take the word \u201cawesome\u201d for example. I was recently in a restaurant where I overheard a waitress ask a nearby patron how he was enjoying his eggs. His response? \u201cThese eggs are AWESOME!\u201d With delightful understatement the waitress replied, \u201cGee. They\u2019re just eggs.\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-random"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}