Sometimes I Wish I Were a Smoker
If cigarettes, cigars or pipes were a) free, b) pleasant-tasting, and c) completely harmless, I think I would be a smoker.Naturally, these three things are ridiculously untrue. I've never smoked for even a moment (a friend tried to teach me how to puff a cigar one time, but I failed miserably) and I suppose I never will. It's never looked or smelled appealing to me, and I've outgrown any vulnerability to that sort of peer pressure.
But there is one allure that grabs me every so often. This morning I saw a guy standing out at the edge of a parking lot, enjoying the cool morning haze, making a little haze of his own. I tried to imagine him without a cigarette, just standing there, staring into space. Then I realized that people don't do that.
When I lived in an apartment building with balconies, I looked with a trace of envy at my neighbors, who could sit out on their lawn chairs late in the evening, just smoking. I didn't smoke, so I tried sitting out on my balcony with a book. Not enough light. I tried sitting out there with nothing, and I could tell that people walking by thought I was watching them. I tried bringing a soda with me... that worked a little better, but it was gone in 5 minutes, and then I was a spy again.
I could sit out with a buddy. Now I'm not so weird. But then we have to talk. We can't just sit there and BE. Because that's just two people leering at passersby. And if there's a nip in the air, or a few more bugs than we care for, it's too easy to just go inside.
My wife and I will sit out on our porch now and then, when the weather's good and we have a dessert to eat, or a beverage to drink. We generally don't just sit there... we talk. And that's nice. But I still say there's something about smoking a cigarette that helps people to understand the value of just BEING.
Do I want more people to smoke? Hell no. I would cast the accursed sticks into the nearest volcano if I could (now there's a smell.) What I really wish is that we, as a culture, would figure out how to just stop for a moment... stop talking, stop doing, stop worrying... to take a break from life and learn how to be.
Now that's smoooooth refreshment!
Labels: autobiography, culture, humor
Posted at 8:48 AM
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I would say that smokers don't know how to "just be". Otherwise, they wouldn't need a cigarette to do it. It's the discomfort that accompanies "being" that draws people into their various distractions, be it smoking or something else.
If it weren't for the health-related issues and the awful taste and smell, though, I'd favor sitting out on the front porch with a smoke over rotting on the couch and frying my brains in front of the tube any day of the week.
Thanks for the reminder to just be.
Yeah... smokers aren't "just being". They're smoking.
But it's the closest I can find. I just imagine them without the instrument-of-slow-and-smelly-death and then I have a model I can emulate.
This is a very interesting thought. I lived in Bulgaria for a few years and I miss the afternoon coffee, where people sit down outside coffee shops and drink a cup of espresso and smoke cigarettes. In the U.S. people go out to eat, in Bulgaria people go out for coffee, and to just be... There is no public place in the U.S. I can be at and relax without over-consuming, and without worry, and where watching people or simply pondering can be done openly.
So maybe an afternoon cup of coffee can have the same function without the cigarettes...
True enough... coffee does fill a social & psychological niche.
If you live in Springfield, I'd propose that the Front Porch might be the kind of place you're looking for. That's the idea, anyway.
I've been thinking about this since you wrote it, and I think I figured it out.
Waiting. Just waiting.
That's how you can just be. Show up early for a lunch meeting or whatever and just wait. I realized it when I was about 15 minutes early to a restaurant and I just sat outside enjoying the breeze and a fake mountain brook nearby. I was able to do all the things that you attribute to smokers and have time to ponder it.
So there you go. The solution is to force yourself to wait. That's when you'll just "be."
Just move to Chicago and you'll get to do LOTS of waiting... in traffic, that is! Actually, traffic makes me either uptight (if its deadlocked) or competitive (if I have room to weave in and out, etc.).
I'm not sure it's totally fair to say smokers don't know how to just be.
I can relate to your post ryan. David and I smoke cloves on occasion (often on cold evenings on our balcony actually hehe) and it actually does allow us to just "be present".
we all need to learn to do that just on our own without a prop - no doubt but even monks use meditation, prayer, postures, etc.
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