When I swear and am angry, my wife can’t handle it. She leaves. In a way, it’s my last last defense. When what she is saying is too painful or I “flip-out” <—another way of saying I give myself permission to protect myself even if it is very destructive, I curse.
When I want to add an edgy impact to a thought I have, I use the words…they carry a forcefullness borne of taboo.
I curse when I want my church friends to feel more comfortable around me. It may seem wierd, but the greater fear around others in an environment where we all assume the other is genuinely trying to be good—is judgment. The fear is judgment. Will he think my effort at goodness is on par with somenoe who can be friendly with him. It’s really rather sick, now that I think about it, but we all love to feel our daily efforts are accepted.
Nobody likes to have his offerings misjudged…partly because we have our own self-doubts about our offerings. And Partly because we like to feel understood and if someone assumes that I am doing the very very best, then he is the only one who truly understands me. Any judges shy of that just don’t get me.
So in this culture of judgment, I find it helps set people at ease when I say “I don’t really give a damn.” Sure I get some raised eyebrows, but then come the smiles…the recognition that this foul-mouthed one really doesn’t have too many aires to put on and therefore they can relax with their own aires. Ironic aint it. I just put on an aire so they would see I wasn’t putting on an aire. And they judged me to be not as judgmental since I did something “wrong”.
we are all idiots of contradiction.
