code words in this life

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A friend send along a first-class article entitled "Code Words to Hide Sexual Abuse."

While the article initially focuses on the code words used in depicting abuse within the confines of Roman Catholicism, it also strikes me as a more general excellent reminder of the times when I or others start talking pretty about one topic or another.

How often do any of us get caught up in a web of rational and soothing fabrication, believing that a "problem" is any less a problem just because it is called an "issue," for example, or that an "operation" is any less invasive just because it is called a "procedure?"

True, inflammatory language has a way of distracting from the problem itself (call bullshit "bullshit" and the person who believes it is not bullshit is likely to become more defensive than considerate), but talking sweet has a similar downside in the sense that if you talk rationally and calmly about a broken heart, it does not prove or assure that the heart can be or is in fact healed.

I just think it is an issue worth observing in the bathroom mirror.
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