“When any act of charity or of gratitude is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also." Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Robert Skipwith, 1771
The word “awesome” has become so heavily used in everyday conversation that it has lost almost all of its gravitas. Back in August of 2014, Jill Shargaa did a TED Talk about today’s rampant overuse of the word. Hers was a humorous plea to stop this elevation of the mundane. “If everything is awesome,” Shargaa said, “then there are no highs or lows, no dynamic.” The truly awesome encounters in life are typically uncommon. Indeed the experiences we have that are somehow magnificent and powerful are given additional impact by their scarcity.
