Respect Epic

It is a preposterous notion to defile someone or anything for that matter without due cause.  To do so means an utter lack of honor for the target.  We know to defile a family member is quite inappropriate and the mere thought disgusts the majority but how about an object?  Certainly to defile property would be against anybody’s better judgment so no need to consider that either.  What if we go beyond the physical realm?  No, not spiritually or religiously but the world that lives among us and is a part of our everyday life, language.  Would it be proper to defile say, a word?  This does not have an immediate yes or no trigger in response does it?  You pause to think, can a word be subjected to being defiled?  Is there reason to be considerate of a word?  Does it have feelings?  Is it somebody’s property?  We’ll get into it to find out.

            A word that has been figuratively raped by the populace today to destroy what was once and in my eyes still can be, not just another word.  This word is epic.  Some words are best used seldom to maximize its definition meaning when used properly.  It’s not reasonable to throw around a word like epic in daily communication nor does it make sense.  ‘How was your breakfast son?’  ‘It was epic!’  How so?  Did you have to raise the pig for the bacon?  Collect the eggs from a chicken coop?  Forge your eating utensils in due preparation for the meal yet to come?  I fear not to lose you yet so let’s keep these questions in reserve for now. Let’s rediscover what epic truly means.

Epic is grand in stature, spanning over many events a great many things.  A poem can be epic when written in length describing a hero’s journey, see Homer’s Iliad.  It need not be poetry as many novels have vast storylines of characters embarking on fantastical feats that culminate into an incredible climax thus encouraging the use of epic to sum up such massive storytelling into one compelling word!  Not just breakfast.  When I heard the word epic in my younger years I instantly thought of films such as: Stars Wars or Indiana Jones since they cover much material over the course of many years.  Ask yourself if epic fits to these movies or to any other film or book series.  A word can only be credible if you treat it with respect.  It serves only to degrade oneself mentally when attaching a trendy word to your vocabulary for the sake of fitting in with society.

            Why is epic being diminished?  Overuse of a word leads it down a path it doesn’t want to go.  How tiresome is it to speak with an individual who reuses the same two or three curse words over and over from sentence to sentence? Epic doesn’t want to become that, it’s a slap in the face to be categorized with mere swear words.  Today it’s broadly used to describe a singular event that may or may not have any grand aspect to it at all.  You’ve seen the epic fail posts no doubt, but are those accurate?  Perhaps it’s a runner face down on the ground feet from the finish line with ‘epic fail’ stamped across the image.  Is this an epic fail though?  It can’t be summed up so simply without knowing the story that leads to the runner face down.  That’s why Darth Vader tossing the emperor over the side leading to his demise isn’t an epic fail in itself.  It’s rather the events leading to it that create the emperor’s entire plot from episode one to six as being a failure of epic proportions.  To sum it up in that single instance, and leave out the rest of that world isn’t justifiable.  Star Wars is epic, one scene is not.  It would be as stating that a man shot and killed with a gun is – epic death.  You need an entire series of occurrences to support the time of death for it to attain epic status.  It’s not due to any one isolated event.  Using epic this way is demeaning to its inherent being.  Being epic is not as commonplace as the trend today suggests.

            To leave epic on the shelf and use it scarcely is its function.  If the overuse continues, its probable there are those who will want to remove it from their vocabulary altogether for want of not coming across as an idiot.  Let’s prevent epic from going the way of a hit single record.  Put some respect into what you say and you may learn to appreciate what a word really is.

            No this article is not epic.