Elegance of Mind

In this age where profanity is common place even on daytime television it can be difficult to be pure in one’s speech.  I am not stranger to using a swear word but at least in my professional life I prefer to keep a clean tongue in my head.  I was truly shocked when I first started working in a law office and heard the lawyers using the F word in front of their secretaries (in those days we were called secretaries, not assistants).  I was 25 years old and can honestly say I had never used that word nor had anyone ever used that word in front of me during my professional career up until that point.  I had worked with some seemingly uneducated persons, butchers, mechanics, clerks and so on but I must say that they were all true gentlemen.  If they accidentally let slip a word like “damn” or “hell” they would apologize profusely.  So it was with considerable astonishment that I heard these so-called educated lawyers using extreme profanity in front of their secretaries with never a word of apology spoken. 

Over the years I have even less reason to respect the law profession than I had back then when I was exposed to this constant crude atmosphere.  I went in expecting to be Della Street to some Perry Mason; boy was I wrong.

Why am I bringing this up?  I am currently enjoying the second season of “Downton Abbey” and in between I am watching “Cranford” and therefore appreciating polite expressions of thought.  I don’t know if that was really the way it was back then but I am pretty certain that women of any respectable class did not use bad language.

Language is also a reflection of what is in one’s mind, I think.  Therefore the title “elegance of mind”.  It is difficult to be dainty, polite or elegant when the F word pops into one’s head whenever a “discussion” is going on there.  Thankfully when I am thinking to myself I am usually in a positive frame of mind and curse words aren’t flowing off my figurative tongue.  Have you noticed that when you are in a good frame of mind that you feel better, your ideas are clearly and basically you are in a very positive place.

I think when a person is exposed to foul language it ruffles them up.  I was watching The Rifleman yesterday and a woman was murdered on the episode but we only saw her booted feet.  I’ve mentioned this before but when we see more grisly things it can be extremely disturbing.

The book “The Hunger Games” is coming out as a movie later this year and while the premise may seem far fetched, I wonder just how much closer we are to moving to that level of “entertainment” than we really think we are.  It’s very worrisome to think that we are living in an increasingly violent and uncivilized world.  When entertainment lowers the bar, real life isn’t far behind.

An elderly man from the small town east of my town went missing a week ago, and now they’ve found his body.  The poor man was last seen at a gas station.  Seriously, are we going to have to be afraid to pump gas now?