What’s worse than that are the numerous parents I see smoking in the faces of their children and infants. Pregnant mothers are advised not to smoke while carrying their babies in their womb, but they see no problem with blowing first and second hand smoke (which they say is more dangerous) into the faces of these same children. What’s the difference? Why not just smoke while you’re pregnant too?
Another problem I see is those of us who choose not to smoke, are forced to do so in the presence of these people when we cannot get away from them. While waiting for the bus one day, I was standing alone and looking in one direction. All of a sudden I was smoking, but I had no cigarette in my hand and I wondered “when did I start smoking?” I turned to my left and there was a frumpy teenager standing right beside me, in my personal space smoking a cigarette, and he didn’t ask me for permission to put the cigarette in my mouth. I was being forced to inhale what he and his cigarette were exhaling, so I moved as far away from him as I could.
All over this country, supposedly the country of “amour” I see hate and hatred, and the people who are being hated are the same ones doing the hating. They are hating themselves. Oh I know what you, and they may be thinking, “how can you say these people hate themselves?” Anytime we continue to inflict upon ourselves a habit we know has been proven to cause life-threatening diseases and death . . . need I say more? How can we say we love ourselves? Love and hate/hatred are not just emotions we feel. They are states of mind. Forget the emotions of hate and deal with the state of mind. Sure we do things out of our emotions, but when we’re not emotional, we perform from our state of mind.
I have met many people in this country who have lost loved ones to cancer and they were smokers. These same people have come to some of us after the funerals of their relatives, crying and then pulling out a cigarette and wanting us to pray for them. All I can do is look at them and they see the expression on my face and realize how ludicrous they sound as they light up their cigarette. I’m not saying they don’t need prayer, for we all do, but to light up the cigarette in my presence and in my face with tears in your eyes over the one you just buried who died because they contracted cancer because they would not stop smoking for several years . . . Need I continue with this never ending sentence which has no comma or semi-colon to designate that I’m taking a breath in the middle of this thought? Inhale. Exhale. Cough. Ahem. Sneeze.
There are so many habits from which we suffer, but we suffer because we do them to ourselves. Habits are not things that others do to us. They are things we do to ourselves and we make excuses for continuing to do them, rather than dealing with the chain of events and reactions that motivate us to continue down these roads. For several years I was grossly overweight. So I read every book I could find to deal with the situation from low-fat to no-fat to carbohydrates to no carbs. Then I did every exercise that I could to break a sweat for I knew if I did not sweat I would not be burning any fat. Well, I was right. LOL!! That was one time I wished I was wrong, but there was too much scientific evidence to prove that I was right. I just wasn’t one of the persons chosen to participate in those studies.
Why was I overweight? I didn’t get there overnight that’s for sure, but over time I was doing something repeatedly that took me to a place I did not want to be. But I did not know what it was for a very long time. So let’s fast forward to that moment of discovery and walk backwards to see what I was doing to myself which prayer alone could not change. Yes, I believe in the power of prayer, but some things require more than prayer alone for lasting change. Weight loss is one of those things, at least for me it is.
While spending much time alone, in prayer (which is what started it all by the way) – conversation with God – Him speaking and me listening and vice versus (for that’s what a conversation is) I would hit emotional highs and lows and quickly walk to the kitchen. When I arrived there I would hear a question inside myself, “why are you here?” I would look around me and realized God was speaking to me. “Is it time to eat?” I would check my watch and say “no”. He would reply, “then get a glass of water and leave this place.” This would happen day after day until I began to see a pattern. When my emotions were topsy-turvy, I would “run for the border!” whether I was hungry or not, whether it was time to eat or not. I needed to find another way to deal with my emotions. I needed to find another way, a better way to “respond” to not only my emotions, but to whatever was triggering my emotions in that manner. This took time. A lot of quiet time. Alone. With God.
I fell in love with water as I drank more and more water rather than eating something, anything to comfort me. So the first thing I learned about myself and habits was that when my emotions were on the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a storm, I would run to food, mainly sugary foods, for comfort. Many of us call those foods “comfort foods” for at the time we’re taking them in, they seem to bring us comfort and calm our nerves. I’ve heard cigarette smokers say the same thing. You can see them calm down with the first inhalation.
The second thing I learned about myself was I leaned heavily upon sugar in all its simple forms. I was not prejudiced or discriminatory against any white sugars. I loved them all the same!! J They were my friends. LOL!! Hmmmm. So sugar had partnered with my emotions, but I was learning that I was the criminal committing the crime against my own self. No one was forcing me to eat sugar. No one held me at knife point or with a gun insisting that I eat that white drug. I did it to myself because of immature coping mechanisms and poor defense mechanisms for dealing with life’s difficulties, real and imagined. So the weight came, again and again along with medical problems. One thing led to another, but the true problem was now buried beneath the medical issues.
Being alone and far, far away from home (and Shrek & Fiona were not around at that time.) I ran out of medications and wondered “what would I do”? But within a matter of weeks, as I continued to listen to and obey the voice of the Lord in my spirit, my body began to change and respond as well. I began to sleep better and more, going to bed when the sun went down and getting up when the sun came up. Resting more. Facing the issues of life and not repressing them, even though some days were better than others. I was learning new habits, first on the spiritual side which helped me on the emotional side, which in turn revealed what I was doing on the physical side to harm myself. Lack of self-love, led to habits to fill in the void to make me feeeeel loved.
When we learn what true love is, that it’s not an emotion, not just a feeling, we then can apply it to ourselves and become happy people. We cannot give what we don’t have. We cannot lead where we won’t go, and we cannot direct where we’ve not been. We cannot teach what we've not learned. We cannot perform what we have not rehearsed; and we must first practice on ourselves. We must first rehearse in the privacy of our own thoughts and feelings about ourselves. I’m not talking about narcissism, but REAL, healthy love. “Love thy neighbor as you love thyself.” So you see, God is not against us loving ourselves for He knows we cannot love others until we first love ourselves. He commands us to love ourselves for He loves us with a perfect love.
We disrespect others because we do not respect ourselves, thus people smoke in their children’s faces, their parents’ faces and the faces of strangers because, well, they smoke first in their own faces. J Didn’t take a rocket scientist for me to figure that one out did it? LOL!! Bad habits can be broken and new ones learned. I’ve had my bout with addictions so I know how strong substances can be, but I also know how much stronger my will is over sugar and things, and I refuse to hand over my life to some THING to control me and use all my resources to practice, and then use all my resources to try to restore what was destroyed, because I continued to do something negative to myself.
When we finally take responsibility for ourselves . . . our words, our thoughts, our actions, our choices and decisions . . . When we really decide that we want to live good quality lives and not lives of always trying to get well and be well . . . When we stop blaming others for what we’re doing to ourselves . . . Look in the mirror the next time you’re smoking that cigarette; look in the mirror the next time you start eating that second pint of ice cream . . . Look in the mirror the next time you smoke, inhale or inject some other natural and unnatural drug(s) and ask yourself “who’s doing this to me?” Whose hands are those? Whose mouth is that? Whose feet are those? Etc. And the next question should be “and why am I doing this to myself?” What’s the purpose? What’s the good on the other side of that cigarette in my mouth? A temporary feeling of calm and tranquility? (And when the smoke clears, the situation is still the same but now your lungs, and ours are full of flames.) We can get calm and tranquility from a hot bath and soft music with candles. We can get that from a good foot soak and massage. We can get that from a good nap and a bunch of laughs from watching a good episode or two of the shows “Mash” and the “Jeffersons” from the 70s. And they won’t pollute our lungs and minds, but just the opposite. We will laugh so much and so hard that the tears will cleanse our eyes and our faces, and the coughing will clear our lungs and shake our stomachs that we might lose a pound or two without exercising, or hard work. And if you’re rolling on the floor laughing, well then you might not have to run the vacuum cleaner. J
France is an . . . ashtray? As long as 95% of the inhabitants continue to empty cigarette smoke and nicotine into their bodies, then yes. This country will only be as sick or as healthy as its residents. Cough. It’s time to clear the air.
Peace.
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