[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F on March 25, 2007, 4:05 pm, in reply to "Denial vs knowing risk. And my choice is?" “something as trivial as smoking” I’d like to point out that for a smoker, it isn’t trivial. It is an integral part of her life in ways that only a smoker can understand. I maintain that no smoker can really deny the effects of smoking or truly believe that he or she is not at risk to the extent you appear to believe. Are we able to set accept it and set our thoughts about it aside? Yes, of course. If we couldn’t, we would find it difficult to continue smoking. No smoker, I believe, can find him/herself out of breath after activities that shouldn’t have affected them and deny that smoking is harmful or that he/she is immune. I believe that pleasure in taking the Risk is a factor in every smoker’s decision to continue smoking and the pleasure we derive from it. We just don’t have to talk about it and, I believe, most smokers wouldn’t be comfortable exploring that facet of their motivation to continue smoking, certainly not with non-smokers. Those of us who do and enjoy it are a special group. I hope you will get to enjoy your girlfriend’s lethal habit for many years, Pete, but I also hope that you can appreciate that at some level, she isn’t immune to being aware that smoking is harming her health and that her decision to continue smoking is steadily increasing the chances that she will die from it. Every smoker knows that and accepts that. How we deal with it, however, varies widely from person to person.
Pete, as always I enjoy your discussion and, in particular, your perspective as a non-smoker.
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