A blank pad of paper and a pencil, and a photo of author Richard Ely, smiling.
Richard Ely
The other night at Trader Joe’s, my little basket of items — two peaches, a quart of yogurt, a bottled smoothie, and a bottle of sparkling water — elicited an enthusiastic response from the tall, athletic checkout guy. “Perfect,” he said. “Awesome!”
He stuffed two bags together. “How’s your day going?”
“Going good.”
“Awesome,” he said.
When I inquired, it turned out that his own day was also awesome.
With practiced efficiency, he filled the bag and announced the total — less than twenty bucks.
I fished in my pocket. “I’ll pay cash,” I said.
“Perfect,” he announced. “Awesome.”
Sound familiar? For years now, the word “awesome” has been overused a prodigious, enormous number of times — an awesome number, really, according to one of the definitions of the word “awesome.”
On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with this. There have always been words that serve as stand-in expressions of enthusiasm and support: “Great. Excellent. Cool. Fantastic.” In my youth, but no longer in use: “Groovy. Far out. Dig it. Right on.” More recently: “Dope. Sick. Rude. Phat.” And so on.
These words don’t bother me, and I didn’t mind the checkout guy’s patter. It was rote, maybe even a requirement of his job, but not meaningless. It gave a rhythm to our interaction, moved things along, like scat singing or a preacher’s call and response, the meaning of the words less important than the ritual act of communication. His words sparked a connection, however tenuous: two people making a small effort to convey mutual friendliness and respect.
Trader Joe’s was busy that night. It was late evening, not long before the checkout guy’s shift would end. I considered asking him how often he had used the word “awesome” that day. Maybe he’d have stopped for a moment, looked right at me, and laughed. That would’ve been pretty awesome. But if he misunderstood my intention, he might have been offended or irritated, so I decided to let it go. After all, he was in a zone, keeping the greased wheels rolling, and it probably made no sense to bring that train to a halt.
Afterwards, though, I kept thinking about that word “awesome,” a word I avoided using for years. Was I being precious and snotty? Maybe. For young people like the checkout dude who use it all the time, the word “awesome” reflects an overall enthusiasm for life. When my 25-year-old friend Michael is truly excited, the energy and amazement leap out of his voice. “Awesome!” he cries, smiling wildly. “That’s awesome!”
Okay, I happen to like enthusiasm and have no quibble with it. But consider this: “awesome” and “awful” share the root word “awe,” and their overlapping meaning is as close to “terrible” as it is to “wonderful.” The Oxford English Dictionary describes awe this way: “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder,” while “awesome” means “extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.” About awe, Merriam-Webster gets even more specific: “any emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.”
Looking up synonyms, I find 30 or so — “breathtaking, amazing, stunning, astounding, staggering, incredible, phenomenal, formidable, mind-boggling, wondrous, heart stopping,” etc. — an impressive adjectival batch, none of which quite captures the mixture of wonder, reverence, and dread that characterizes awe.
There are truly awesome things in this world. Some are human made. A Beethoven symphony, King Lear, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. The world’s tallest building, techno-gadgetry, brain surgery, the insights of Jesus and Buddha, the atomic bomb, the human propensity for cruelty and violence. And so on.
In my mind, though, the most consistently awesome force is nature: the wind, the sky, the sun, the moon, the oceans and rivers and lakes, the mountains, the forests, the deserts. Great blue whales, hummingbirds, redwood trees, sunsets, waves crashing ashore, hurricanes, tornadoes, the roar of a lion. The mystery of life itself. The vastness of our universe, the number of visible stars, our human brains and nervous systems, and on and on.
Love is awesome. Kindness is awesome. Murder is awesome.
We are, in fact, surrounded by awesome beings, sights and sounds. Birth is awesome, as is death. God is awesome, if you believe. And if you don’t believe, the universe is awesome, as are evolution and the Big Bang.
I have now written that word — the “A” word — more times in a few minutes than I have in the past three decades, and it feels good. For me, it’s almost as if I revived the word to its full power.
Or maybe it’s the world that has regained full power in my imagination, leaving me half convinced that pretty much everything is awesome. In which case, the Trader Joe’s checkout guy was right: Our little interaction was awesome. It’s awesome that human beings could manage to grow food, package it, transport it, and stock it on shelves in a spacious, temperature-controlled building created by other humans, and that on the night in question, a young man and I could communicate with a minimal amount of language as I exchanged a rumpled, green piece of paper known as a $20 bill for my fruit, yogurt, smoothie and sparkling water, then walked away happy one minute later. And took it all for granted.
Awesome? Well, maybe not as strictly awesome as a meteor shower or an eclipse of the sun. Nonetheless, the big-picture story behind a single purchase at Trader Joe’s reveals the interdependence crucial to our survival in this complex and daunting world. I think that qualifies as awesome.
Richard Ely is an artist, editor, and writing coach in Madison.
If you are interested in writing a personal essay for Isthmus, query lindaf@isthmus.com.
