Loose Terms

Sometimes I get frustrated with the English language.

Maybe that's not completely true. Maybe it's the fact that I get frustrated with how people use the English language. You see there are all these words that we have, and we use them all the time. But so often people don't grasp the depth of what they truly mean or intend. They're loose terms.

Friend, love, thank-you, what is that?

What does it mean to truly be thankful and to express a deep and heartfelt gratitude? So many times we hear people say  (often with tears in their eyes or a smile on their face)  "oh, thank-you is not enough but it is all I can say." C'mon English, step up to the plate! Is it that our language truly fails us, or is it that we haven't mastered the use of the language we speak?.... I can't decide.

The other term that always bothers me is 'friend'. I'll just put that out there. Go check out facebook, apparently you have 500 {or more} friends. But if you were in a time of need, how many of those people would drop everything they were doing to come to your aid or to assist you? Those are the people I would call my friends, and I can guarantee you that you ain't gunna have 500 people rushin' to your side. I could name you five. But what does that make the other 495 people?...you tell me.

And then there's love, basically the meaning of life, but we throw it around so loosely that it has as little impact as "a", "and", & "the".

"I love this hat"

"I love that show"

"I love Ke$ha" 

(ew...no)

I don't have the mental capacity to trace it back to the three Greek meanings of love (you know, like the root of the word and actual meaning of it from thousands of years ago). Go check it out on Google. I DO know that there was the ability to break up "love" so that when something was really and truly loved, such as a spouse or child that it wasn't deemed with the same word as fully appreciating pizza.

So now what do we do? Theres this built up anger and frusteration with the use of English, but it's simply not practical to make up new words. Or to learn another language. But when we actually want our words to mean something, how do we go about doing that when society is already mentally flooded with noise and words? How do we effectively convey to someone that we are genuine in what we mean and say without contributing to the flood of words and noises they are bombarded with every day?

I really don't have an answer. Sometimes I just think about these things.