It's a historic moment of recognition for little images that have been gaining popularity since 1999

Oxford Dictionaries made history on Monday by announcing that their “Word of the Year” would not be one of those old-fashioned, string-of-letters-type words at all. The flag their editors are planting to sum up who we were in 2015 is this pictograph, an acknowledgement of just how popular these pictures have become in our (digital) daily lives:

“Although emoji have been a staple of texting teens for some time, emojiculture exploded into the global mainstream over the past year,” the company’s team wrote in a press release. “Emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.”

<

So, why am I writing about emojis? Hey,  I'm surprised I can use EMOJI in a sentence!  

I've received them before, but, not in the context that I did, this recently.

I sent a very heart-felt message to someone I know, someone I've known for  quite awhile, someone in my age group.  I ended my , lets call it, 'letter' with "... as I write this, I'm in tears."  The response I received was an emoji, an EMOJI !!!  So, I thought: ok,  when she has more time, I'll receive some WORDS..but, no, a solo, lonely EMOJI.  

I'm told that young people don't talk-they text..and now, EMOJI ! 

Can  emotion be expressed in a single image, well, I suppose, but what happened to expressive writing? Every response needn't be a paragraph, but, where's this leading? If you're expecting me to have an answer: (is there an EMOJI for...keep looking?)  

 We're too busy to look up, to make eye contact with anything other than our 'smart' phones.  We've all heard the expression, "eyes are the window of the soul" -  Best o' luck trying to find the origin . "There seems to be a great deal of debate over the origins of the phrase and a lot of people have said it. It's been attributed to Shakespeare, Leonardo DaVinci and others..." “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.” , Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre  ...Psalm 31:9: Be gracious unto me, O LORD, for I am in distress; Mine eye wastethaway with vexation, yea, my soul and my body

and, Scientists Discover That Eyes Are Windows To The Soul . There are a multitude of references. 

Ok, Emojis do have eyes, but they're  not YOURS !

I recall, o're the summer, seeing some high school youngsters  around a fire pit. They were all looking down at their phones, texting. So, where were they? Where were they really  present? Around the fire with their friends, or, in the cyber world? The easy answer is: both. For me, I don't think there's anything more powerful that eye to eye, heart to heart communication  Every communication needn't be deep, but, some should,yeah? 

"There is a saying, 'Eyes are the windows to the soul.' It means, mostly, people can see through someone else by eye contact in seven seconds. I have a habit that if I meet someone I don't know, I'd like to look at her or his eyes on purpose. When my eyes lay on them, I can immediately see their true color."

-Peng Liyuan

Maybe someday, there will be a song with this refrain:

...it was just my emojination,

running away with me...