Awesome friends

I’ve been thinking about friends.

Specifically, I have been thinking about the 3,027 friends I have accumulated on Facebook, and how we have “hollowed the word friend by overuse and misuse…” To hollow a word. That cuts right to it, doesn’t it? We hollow a word when we rob it of its power, when we deplete it by repetition, when we cheapen it by failing to understand and respect its meaning. The origin of the word “friend,” its proto-Indo-European root, is “love.” (And no, I am not that smart. But Wikipedia is.) Do I love those 3,027 FB friends? Do they love me?

To have a friend, a true friend, a person with whom we have a deep, lasting, meaningful connection that transcends time, that really is something, isn’t it? To form a bond, sometimes formed in an instant—yes, I am talking about you, Karuna, and you, Kristina; other times evolving over years --Claudia, my soul sister, and Julie, yes you… these are folks to be treasured; these are relationships to be honored. To reach a level of understanding with and without words, that is magic. Barb, wherever you are now, you know that we had that, right to the end.

Thinking of the force and intensity of true friendship, its energy, its weight, its heat, I feel the need to resuscitate the word itself, to fill it rather than hollow it, to save it from its meaninglessness in the virtual world, that world in which I have—did I mention this before?--3,027 friends. I must attempt to rescue it from the same fate as that other powerhouse of a word that is now frail and listless. The word is “awesome.”

Yes. Another language rant. I promise it’s a short one. How did we manage to suck dry that word? That word that means—literally (as they say) FULL OF AWE. Remember what awe is? That intense emotional rush; the amazement, wonder, and reverence of it; the breathless encounter with something vast and extraordinary; the sense of insignificance in the face of something so much greater than ourselves? That is awe.

 Here's what it is not: I ordered an Americano from the guy behind the counter at the Starbucks in the University of Washington student union a few days ago. I said I wanted extra room and two-percent in the room.

“Awesome,” he replied.

Had he been one of my 3,027 tile-people on Facebook, I would have unfriended him.