How to be a mother if you don't have your arms?
I was slowly working my way through my pile of unread e-mail a few minutes ago and a friend sent me a short video in the e-mail attachment. The video was about a young couple that fell in love and later got married and had a child together. The normal path, right? It is, but for a one, minor detail. The mother doesn't have arms. She is without her both arms from her shoulders down. But she goes shopping, changes diapers and takes care of her son, runs a small internet based business and goes to gym. In fact it looked like she did everything by herself - everything a normal mother would do. And whether the video was a fake or not isn't really important. What's important is that if you set your heart on fire, if you really decide then almost anything can be achieved.
Many people say this is only a saying that bears no resemblance to everyday life. And in a way they're right. Because many people today are incapable of devoting themselves to one thing, to one goal so fully and absolutely. Many people today act like even the normal daily events are too much for them to handle - what with trying to achieve another goal. At least that's my view of things.
I will never be able to understand why people smoke. Why they continue to do so when they know the risks, when they know it's the kind of thing people die from. I cannot (even if I tried) understand how one can have such a reckless attitude towards one's own life. As if you're talking about a person (you don't really care about) doing something harmful to them. Whenever I mention the possibility that smoking kills to a smoker they say something that vaguely resembles: "Not me, though..." or "I don't really smoke all that much..." or "I can quit whenever I want to - it's not addiction."
But they don't quit. They continue puffing away even if only a couple cigarettes a day. And over years a couple cigarettes become many thousand cigarettes and they still don't care. They're smoking their life away. And don't care. How can someone be so reckless? What sort of a person wants to die a slow, painful and premature death? If one likes dying so much, they have all the means to end their lives early. But no - they take the stylish and longer route - they smoke it away.
Then comes - "My grandpa smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and died at 90 years of age. See - smoking doesn't really kill." No, it doesn't. Smoking doesn't always kill. But it leads to frequent pulmonary infections, emphysema, heart disease and even blindness. That's right. You can become blind from smoking. But keep on going - because none of these (http://www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/basic02.html) can affect you. Not you, because you're a smoker. Everything just bounces off you - you're not going to die because of smoking. At least you're not going to allow yourself to think you're dying because of smoking.
The thing is - many people say I've just got this thing about smokers and that they're my pet peeve and that's the reason I like to lash out at them. And it's not true. I, personally, don't even have a thing against smokers as people - as unique personalities and charming fellows. What really gets to me is their attitude that smoking doesn't kill. A friend's mother is dying from lung cancer as we speak - she's in the last stages and doesn't have more than a few days left. Her son stopped smoking immediately. But he never stopped before. He knew - everybody knows smoking kills - but he didn't do anything about it. Acting in this passive, reckless, almost cynical way, acting as though things don't really concern you, acting as though this talk about smoking related diseases is only the buzzing of an annoying fly to you - now THIS REALLY GETS TO ME.
How can one not care for his own well being? One eats when he's hungry, one drinks when she's thirsty, one has sex, lives in a house to keep warm, breathes, talks to other people to satisfy their social needs. One does all this to keep healthy and yet one smokes.
I suppose the reason smokers don't quit is that they can go on long enough (for years, even decades) without problems and when the health problems become a reality they've been smoking for so long it's difficult to quit. Almost impossible. But it's almost impossible to be a mother to a child if you don't have arms. And yet, some people manage it. The other problem - as I see it - is that people don't collapse everytime they light a cigarette, so before the problems arise, the habit of smoking has well sunk in. And to ditch a habit is very difficult indeed, but not impossible. If one likes life, if they like people around them, then surely they will want to continue their life and live to ripe old age. Or at least attempt to do so.
Stop smoking. Do it now. Do it for yourself. Read Ash (http://www.ash.org.uk/), read all of them and then consciously and responsibly say you can continue smoking without feeling you're harming yourself. Read http://www.mdsupport.org/library/nosmoke.html on how smoking leads to blindness and say you don't mind becoming blind if you can still smoke your cigarettes. If you continue smoking and do so completely aware of the facts and can continue to do so without a reckless outlook at life, then you're a lost case and I give up.
But it doesn't mean I won't regularly and repeatedly tell you you're harming yourself. Honestly - would you jump in front of a speeding car, completely aware of the fact you might as well die? If yes, continue smoking. Please do. Or just walk on the highway. A car might hit you in no time.
8 Comments:
Although I am not a smoker myself, I must admit that I admire smokers and in a way morally support their courage and recklessness. In my opinion, the choice of whether to smoke or not is not such a nontrivial matter as you try to portray it. Smoking has both positive and negative aspects, both very real. To decide which side outweighs the other is neither a trivial nor an obvious decision. Sure, if I begin to smoke I have a good chance to die of lung cancer or some other such nasty thing a few years earlier than otherwise. It will also have a monetary cost, since buying all those cigarettes can be fairly expensive. It will have a social cost, because society is becoming less and less tolerant towards smoking. But in exchange for all this, I'll get a large number of very happy moments --- surely smoking must be giving the smokers pleasant sensations, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Now, supposing that one has e.g. 45 more years to live, and is given the opportunity to make the next 40 years a bit happier in exchange for giving up the last 5 years (which will be miserable anyway! likely enough, you'll be old and weak and sick, a mere ballast existence, a burden to yourself and to everyone around you, even if you never so much as looked at a cigarette in your entire life), it seems entirely plausible to me that a person might consider this a good tradeoff. Some people would choose a longer but less pleasant life, but some might well choose a shorter and happier one.
This reminds me of the joke about a man who comes to the doctor and says: "Doctor, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't chase after women. Do you think I've got good chances of living till I'm a hundred years old?" -- "I guess you do, but why the hell do you want to live a hundred years?"
Besides, there's the problem that in none of these things are we dealing with certainties. By not smoking I might reduce the chances of dying of lung cancer, but who knows, perhaps I'll die at the same age of a heart attack instead, or perhaps I'll get run over by a bus, or whatever. In circumstances like this, it's a part of human nature to prefer certain benefits in the near future to uncertain benefits in the distant future. "Ah, take the cash, and let the credit go."
You ask: "How can one not care for his own well being?" But they do. They care very much. This is precisely why they smoke: because it makes them feel better. Just like you, they are trying to squeeze as much out of life as possible. They only have a different criterion of what exactly it is that they want to get out of life. They have decided that quantity isn't the only thing that matters. What use are a few more seconds, or days, or years, if one's whole life has been empty and dull and miserable and devoid of pleasure?
I for one don't consider life to be valuable per se. It is valuable only if it is sufficiently pleasant and enjoyable; otherwise, it can very well turn out to be not worth living. And I salute all smokers as a splendid embodiment of this principle. I admire them for delivering a resounding slap in the face to that abominable and all-too-common human desire to prolong life at all costs, no matter how miserable it gets. This is the one desire that is genuinely worth overcoming. If humanity ever overcomes it, "we shall be gods".
I took some time to respond to your comment, because frankly at first I thought you were joking. Now I will say what I think about your comment as bluntly as possible: it's naive and looking for excuses.
If you really, honestly believe smoking presents a source of happines to the smoker, I can't argue. But I think smoking can hardly make you happy when you have difficulty breathing and tar stains on your fingers and in your oral cavity.
To each his own.
Well, I wasn't joking, although I admit that towards the end of that previous comment I almost did start to get carried away somewhat by my pseudo-rhetorics (which admittedly happens to me quite often; and in fact, once it even happened that I wrote a comment in earnest but people mistook it for sarcasm...). But anyway, I still don't understand how you can argue that smokers don't derive some kind of pleasure or happiness from smoking. I admit that I am exceedingly naive (your observation regarding that is quite correct), but why on earth would anybody want to smoke if they weren't getting something out of it --- something they consider sufficiently pleasant, valuable, or desirable that it makes them willing to smoke even though they are aware of the likely consequences for their health?
You say that smoking can hardly make you happy when you have difficulty breathing etc. --- but by the time a smoker's health gets so bad, he or she must have been smoking for years, consumed tens of thousands of cigarettes and probably experienced many pleasant moments because of this. All I'm trying to argue is that this deal --- many pleasant moments of smoking in exchange for a somewhat shortened life and an increase in the probability of suffering from certain ailments --- is not necessarily a bad one. It simply depends on which things a person holds more valuable at the time when he or she is considering whether to begin smoking or not.
In fact there is nothing particularly special or unique about this pattern of behaviour. It is simply an instance of taking a risk (e.g. of dying a bit earlier because of lung cancer) in the pursuit of a perceived good (e.g. the pleasant moments experienced during smoking). As in any such situation, different people hold different opinions about whether the prospect of some perceived good is worth the risk. Some people decide to take the risk, others don't. It isn't obvious to me that only one of these decisions is reasonable. And I'm inclined to think that being excessively risk-averse (e.g. being unwilling to take up a potentially pleasant activity because of the risks involved in that activity) ultimately exposes one to a far greater risk --- that of having a dull, bland, pointless life; devoid perhaps of pain but also of happiness; which might well turn out to be a waste and a tragedy far greater than any amount of coughing and tar.
The last part of your last paragraph almost tries to prove that smoking is the only way to live one's live to the fullest. Both of us (being nonsmokers) must then be very disappointed in our lives.
But I could perhaps say for myself that I derive pleasure from a lot of things and that I can think of at least 20 activities that give me satisfaction if I have time to pursue them. Therfore one could argue that there are certain activities which make a person happier and have possibly fewer side-effects than smoking. Smokers could trade off thair habit for something else and perhaps still remain as happy as they were when they were smoking. But the choice is theirs.
But, by all means, please continue this discussion as I also enjoy reading your beautifully structured sentences. (This is not sarcasm and not a joke.)
I can't stand fog, at least smoke. Ow, that's so ugly, cigarettes, and cigarette nails and teeth. I hope I may find the right girlfriend before I meet a smoker.
So my dilemma is about aesthetic: Why smoke if everything around and inside you gets dirty? It's such a nasty habit, and it's a habit, nothing more, so everybody could give up on it, replace it by something else. But it's hard to do so, I guess nicotine addiction masks the same kind of depression as alcohol and drug use do, and we know so few can manage to escape that. But one thing I am sure of, I won't start smoking, and I hope I won't date any smoker either, ever.
I am not really thinking about the life span of a smoker, which is shortened because smoking just isn't healthy. On a bit roughly note, smokers don't really die at the age of 20, no, they die at, what, 50, 60? That's about 60 - 80% to the normal life span. That's not a big deal, is it. Time is relative. But what bothers me up mostly is the dirt smoking produces. Ow, it's just so nasty, unbearable. Ow. It's like being the enemy of you body. Why would one want to do that? See, I can't understand smokers either.
Bad, I had a bad sleep. I was angry about the whole cigarette thing, the business and the habit, tossing and turning in my bed, I just can't understand smokers. In addition to the yesterday comment I would like to add: I don't understand those that say smoking is ok either. No, it's not ok, and it is very similar to alcohol and drug abuse in my opinion. So, Svetlana Makarovič and others, who are peaceful towards smokers, say it's ok to take drugs.
I think I've purged myself of angriness now and I plan to have a good working day. Good bye and good luck with fresh air!
It's not so difficult to replace one habit with another. It is more difficult to try to understand what makes you indulge in something such as smoking (or eating lots of chocolate for that matter) and then try to get "even" with yourself.
Smoking and eating lots of chocolate for instance are serious problems, but isn't it funny how just about everything we do can be viewed as a bad habbit that compensates our wrong moves in life and such.
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