Profanity Insanity

Once upon a time, there was a young girl. A smart girl. Savvy in her own way. She wandered the halls of her world with a proud and predictable mixture of confidence and naivete. She had strong and snappy reactions to things. To people. To events. To disappointments. She peppered her sentences and thoughts, otherwise marginally eloquent, with words she was raised never to utter. For her, consciously or no, profanity was a calculated crutch. A land to go when things were not fair or favorable. For her, these words had a certain essence of power, of irreverence, of rebellion. In whispering these words, in screaming them sometimes, she felt a little more alive and a little less alone. In cursing the cosmos, she felt a slippery modicum of control.

But something happened to this girl. She grew up. And under the firm grasp of Time, she changed. Her evolution was profound, if not apparent to her. Her eyes opened to new things. Her mind processed the world in a different pattern. Where she once saw blacks and whites and mighty flames, she now saw more subtle hues, a benign blur of endearing embers that were there to warm, not burn. She felt new things, pure things. Like love. She hungered for new fare. For hand-holding over running, for praise over scorn, for harmony over discord. She didn't notice it, but her language shifted with her. Her words changed shape. They became less barbed.

And then there came a time, a natural time, to add to this world. To create and recreate. To the inscrutable world, she contributed her own splash of color. And a baby was born. And in a quiet instant, her tongue was transformed. Her words grew a bit softer, more subtle. Her sentences grew more complex, studded with jewels of reality and longing and love. She knew she was different and yet she didn't know. And then. Another baby. More color. Another aspect. Another angle. The world was a good place and a precarious place and her place. In her mind, she played with words, mixing and mincing them. But they were different words. Sometimes clumsy. But now always clean.

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Do you swear? If so, why? Out of habit or choice or anger or something else? Do you swear less than you used to? Do you think that happy people swear less often or do you think that there is no ready link between profanity and well-being? Do you think finding love or loving life or having kids are natural antidotes to profanity?