Smoking with Emphysema or Self Destructive Behavior
I saw The Departed this weekend, and I noticed a minor character who was smoking while on an oxygen tank. It reminded me of a similar scene that I encountered last fall as I watched (and heard) an elderly gentlemen cough uncontrollably while puffing on a cigarette and breathing from an oxygen tank. In both situations, I just simply wondered, “Why?”
I wrote about this earlier this year in Shouldn’t You Know Better: I watched a nurse puff away on her cigarette, so it’s no surprise that I would mention this as one of the most absurd and destructive behaviors. But smoking is easy to pick on for two major reasons: one, I don’t smoke and two, it’s really dumb to smoke with an oxygen tank. And I don’t think you’d find much disagreement over this.
Not all destructive behavior is so easy to diagnose. We as Americans regularly down greasy, unhealthy foods in harmful quantities. Do you ever wonder how many calories were in your last meal at a restaurant? I would wager you don’t want to know and would be shocked to find out how truly terrible these meals are. Do we care? Probably. Do we act like we care? I doubt it.
We have all sped from time to time. Some of us have done so excessively and dangerously. Some people box with a wall when they’re angry, which, by the way is always a lose-lose proposition for the hand and the wall. Some people eat when they’re depressed; others may purge themselves under adversity.
The world is filled with workaholics who spend their lives trying to “make it” in life. They dream of possession and stuff, only to find little or no satisfaction in the very things that were supposed to make them happy. We work 60 hour weeks, build faulty relationships, and fall prey to shreds of stress as life constantly explodes in our faces. We chose friends that destroy us little by little, choosing them because of some ill-conceived need we feel we have. And we neglect those who actually care.
And we go to bed at night only to get up and do the same things again.
Everyone struggles with this, and if you assume that you don’t, then I would say you’re living a delusional life. We all do things, that, when logically considered, only show how foolish our decisions are. And we wonder why life seems so difficult. And we wonder why things are as they are.
And all the while we refuse to acknowledge our poor choices and their effects on our lives.