Take a Deep Breath
As a lover of Pilates and yoga, I hear the phrase "And now... just take a nice, deep breath" several times a week. For a long while, this instruction annoyed me. I know how to breath quite well, actually. In my 21 years on Earth, I would love to think that that is one thing I have under wraps. This annoyance extends to other phrases that radiate the same energy, like the infamous "Remember to smile!". When we hear a phrase enough, it begins to lose its' true denotation and take in the poison of our feelings about the words. Formally, this is known as semantic drift, where a word's association and/or definition evolves over time due to major historical events, popular media, and culture at large. Think of the pairing of awful and awesome. Awe, being the root of both words, can be defined as a feeling of incredible respect mixed with fear or wonder. Originally, awesome and awful were synonyms for the fearful and reverent. As time progressed, awesome...