Dirty Words (and more)

So, since the Femininity Summit kicked off last week with a prelim meeting, I've been having a lot of conversations about the importance of language and how we carry ourselves when we converse (thanks so much for your wonderful brains, my friends!), which started my mind on a train of thought about swearing. In her post about On the Verge, Desdemona mentioned swearing as a way of getting attention from those around us. It's such a cheap way of getting attention, too -- curses don't express profound ideas or relevant facts. They are spoken merely to grab the attention of listeners and attract it to the emotions of the speaker and how he chooses to express himself. Or, worse, the swearing is merely a habit.

Whatever the reason for swearing, the fact remains that, besides being totally unladylike and inelegant, it's just so boring. Honestly, if you actually stop and think about it (although why you'd really want to, I don't know... :P), there are only a handful of swear words that are constantly repeated and reused. As Desdemona joyously proclaimed, the English language contains so many delightful, scintillating (:D!) words that precisely describe an emotion, situation, or characteristic. Antediluvian. Portrait. Bureau. Sanctimonious. Alizarine. Incorrigible. Desolate. Pudgy. Dichotomy. Bumpkin. Neophyte. They cannot be applied to many situtaions because they convey such an exact idea -- they are vibrant words which paint a living picture in the minds of those who hear or read them. They bring ideas to life.

As Desdemona also pointed out in her post, life is an adventure. If you look at it any other way, you're simply going to end up sobbing your eyes out over some trifle that doesn't really matter. Sure, that C I got in class was horribly disappointing (I'll be honest: it flayed my pride alive), but really? If my final goal in life is to please God, get to heaven, and, God willing, help others to reach heaven, then each moment can and should be lived with the knowledge that I know how the story ends: this may be news to some people, but God wins. The End. Joy is an intrinsic element of the Christian life -- there are no gloomy saints. Every moment can be sanctified, and we were not made to walk through this valley of tears alone. Thank God for friends because otherwise I would have gone insane long ago.

Ultimately, does that C matter in my life? Maybe. I don't know, and there's no point in worrying about it now. There are too many other wonderful and perilous things going on in my life right now for me to spend precious hours fretting over a grade from one class in my freshman year at college. God has a plan for me (another news flash), and it will all work out fine.

This started out as a post about swearing and morphed into a musing on...pretty much everything else. Which is just fine on this blog.