The Diminishing Value of Words

In July 1967, The Beatles released All You Need Is Love. The iconic single became the rally-cry for the Summer of Love. But, what if John Lennon’s lyrics were wrong? What if we actually need more than just love? Let me explain.

Creating Images

During the Summer of Love, cameras needed rolls of film. Camera film was expensive and limited to 12 or 24 exposures. If you were lucky a roll of 12 exposures might net 6-7 good pictures. As a result, each click of the shutter was precious. Later, we would carefully place each good photo in an album for posterity and protection. Those albums were often displayed prominently on a bookshelf in our homes.

Fast forward to 2022 and most young people think film is what’s left after you finish a $5 caramel macchiato at Starbucks. When our mobile phones became digital cameras, film became a thing of the past. We now snap photos with wild abandon. That impunity has cheapened the value of each photo. Today I have 7,849 photos on my phone. I don’t even own a real photo album-or a camera.

A ten year old photo from a family vacation

Creating Words

Way back before the typewriter, people had to write words by hand. In those days you needed paper, a fountain pen and an ink well to write. The ink often smudged, causing you to start over. Yes, creating words required money, skill, education and time.

Entire books have been written that contain nothing but words between lovers from an earlier era. Words were chosen thoughtfully and writing words on paper was a poetic art.

For example, Abraham Lincoln wrote to Lydia Bixby on November 25, 1864 to express his condolences on the death of her five sons in the Civil War:

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.

Today is different. Words are cheap. We can literally speak them into existence with our phones. No typewriter, no ink, no paper, no flowery prose.

In my family we’ve never been super-wordy. So, we’re lucky if we send each other a birthday card-since it’s a lot easier to send the Happy Birthday!!🎊🎉🎁🎈🎂 text instead. It’s quick, to the point, and doesn’t require a stamp.

That’s probably why I find it a little off-putting when some dude uncorks a cringy, over-the-top love note to their “soul-mate” on Facebook. Don’t you immediately wonder if he’s cheating on her? I do.

In comparison, a few weeks ago my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. As we toasted a glass of champagne to at least nineteen or twenty wonderful years, I casually offered up. “You know if you’d killed me the first time it crossed your mind you would be out of prison by now.” She laughed, I laughed. Maybe that’s the secret of a good marriage: a sense of humor.

Courtesy of Allef Vinicius via Unsplash

In contrast, social media has turned many people into emotional exhibitionists. As if each milestone in life requires a Hallmark mini-series on A&E to validate one’s feelings towards another. My favorites are the birthday wishes for children. It’s as if the Harvard admissions counselors are scouring Facebook looking for perfect candidates. Yeah, we all know you love junior but it doesn’t stop there:

“Happy Birthday 🎂 to the most beautiful boy ever. Randy “the rand-man” from the day we saw your shining face we knew you were a special boy”.

Some stop there, many don’t….. Others are just getting ramped up.

“You are the kindest, smartest, most loving boy a mother could ever ask for. Your wit and charm and incredible sense of humor brighten any room you enter. Dad and I are so proud of the person you’ve become and the man you will soon be. And, to think you aced the History AP Exam AND scored the winning 🏈 touchdown against the Spartans last fall! The Ivy’s are in your future, Crimson man!!  Our ♥️‘s are bursting with joy. We are so BLESSED 😇.  We hope you have the BEST 🎂 🎉 🥳 ever!!!!

How do we, as mere mortal parents of mere mortal kids, compete with this kind of “love”? And, more importantly, does anybody buy this stuff? It’s enough to make a regular Dad feel like Red Forman from That 70’s Show. Cause, you know, every once in a while every kid is a “dumb-ass”.  

All this PDA is not healthy. Cause, c’mon let’s both agree that “the rand man” probably isn’t all that special. He fell on that loose football in the end-zone and the AP exam was open book. In fact, all this mushery may be one of the reasons why kids today have such a hard time in the real-world.

(Sorry for the interruption, but I need a favor. I’m trying to get the attention of some legit print outlets. If I can get to 25K subscribers they’ll stop ignoring me. You can help. Would you mind signing up a few friends & family members below? It’s free and they can always unsubscribe. It would mean a lot to me 🙏.)

Out in the real world, kids find out quickly they aren’t “special” or “perfect”. And, they learn that they simply cannot “have anything in life”. I wrote about this in a piece called Why Are American Millennials So Darn Unhappy? (hint: that’s the reason.)

The struggle for perfection is real for our kids, because we’ve raised the bar unreasonably high. It’s a shame. Don’t you wonder who all that perfection is really for? Is it for the kids? Or is it for the parents? Maybe “perfect kids” have become the ultimate status symbol. “Look at me, look at me! I’ve raised perfect kids and you haven’t.” People are trying to fool everyone, including themselves. Cause, let’s be honest, nobody is ever gonna post this on Facebook.

People carefully craft superficial personas and post them to Social Media. I guess these personas are an amalgamation of who they’d like to be. Or what they envy in other people’s lives.

My poor parents would’ve been screwed:

“Congrats to Tommy for finishing 21st out of 29 runners at the Cross Country meet AND getting an 81 on the Algebra test this week. Way to go, T! Keep asking those girls to the Homecoming dance. Eventually someone will say yes!!”

Look, I know I shouldn’t be critical of loving parents. For gosh sakes, my article on the importance of fathers proved anything it’s that our children need more love, not less. But, I’m not sure this is the kind of love they need.

As we’ve become more polarized as a society perhaps our words have also become polarized. Everything is an extreme overreaction. Everything is the finest, best, perfect, greatest, terrific thing ever. Or, everything is the worst, least, most terrible, horrible thing ever. But, the emotional extremes become platitudinal, over time. And, they begin to lose their sting at both ends of the spectrum. I wrote about this in July 2021 in a piece called The War on Civility.

And, I’m betting these cringy “love posts” just add fuel to our children’s already alarming anxiety levels.

“Talk is cheap when your words have no value.”

-Habeeb Akande

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