Let me note that I am passionate about my curse words: the freedom to accentuate an otherwise hum-drum sentiment with a well placed “shit” or “hell” was one I held dear. Mere anger can explode with power when laced with a few “assholes”, and excitement just seems more vibrant when colored with a lively “fucking” or two. There’s fire in cursing, a command for attention and a statement of precisely how serious you are.
And on Friday I extinguished that fire…or, at least, smothered it slightly and stomped on it half-heartedly; it’s hard to banish such a well-loved semantic tool, no?
The decision stems from a broader, much more far-reaching realization that so much of what I do – even seemingly mundane daily habits – is slowly poisoning my soul. This is not a religious awakening; I reference “soul” with a much more general intention. Remove the artificial, the superficial, the minutia and everything we so often to fail to recognize as unimportant. What remains – that concentrated core of humanity residing in each of us – is soul. It transcends religion. It is spirituality in its most organic form. And it’s being poisoned.
It seems a far leap from colorful cursing to poisonous soul. I am coming to realize, though, that with each utterance I both robbed myself of both my ability to weave language in masterful ways (or at least as masterful as I can be) and relegated the true passions of my soul to some quiet corner, where no voice is given them. The English language is blessed with a ripe and robust vocabulary; surely I, a graduate in the study of the language, could capitalize on it without resorting to the tired and uncreative realm of curses. Likewise, wasn’t I confining my communications to the arguably limited world of the simplistic “shit” “damn” and “fuck”? Isn’t what I held inside myself so much more ponderous, so much more worthy of discussion? Yet I ignored this, choosing, even enjoying, to operate within the safe realm of the common, the acceptable, the simple.
You see, this realization is two fold: most noticeable is the deterioration in my communication skills and the surrendering of any command of the English language. But beyond that, and more importantly, is that there is a soul within me – there is something within me that is deep, significant, passionate…and ignored for far too long. Painting simplistic language with curse words rather than exerting the effort to deepen the language is merely symptomatic of a systematic failure to acknowledge the soul. It’s easier to curse than carefully select meaningful words. And it’s easier to coast through life worrying about money and clothes and American Idol rather than find and nourish the truly significant.
Lost in all of that coasting is the soul, that core that makes me human, gives me dimension. It’s poisoned by my ignorance of it. Caught up in everything that society tells us matters – the corporate success, the bank account, the luxury car, the expensive school, the luxury vacations – I am finding myself feeling anything but fulfilled. On the contrary, there’s an unsettling feeling of emptiness, a growing wariness that maybe society has it wrong, maybe we’ve all been chasing an illusion of happiness, an imagined oasis in what we’ve contrived to be a barren world.
I’ve never felt this before: life has never been barren or empty for me. And it cannot be a coincidence that only after chasing an imagined happiness did the world seem devoid of passion and joy. Only after I dismissed the soul as too weighty, its passions too much work. Only after I embraced the easy path of superficiality. Only after I learned how to curse and forgot how to talk.
There is a soul within me. There is power within me – beyond the power of a well-placed curse word or of a corporate title. There is reward in the work of cultivating that power, be it the perfectly-crafted sentence or the deep, transcending feeling of true happiness. There is a cathartic joy in deciding not to curse anymore.
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