We Smoke Because .......

Online pic.

Smokers amuse me in winter. They smoke outside in the snow. For some reason, it is usually two or three people. Maybe they have a smokers’ support group where they work, turning coffee breaks into smokers’ break. They always talk to each other, not like families in restaurants glued to their phones.

I’m just a passer-by but I’m still curious about what lepers talk about. They must feel like lepers because the world doesn’t want them. Why do we care? They are destroying their own lungs. Do they talk about that? That’s highly unlikely. Do they share how they took up smoking?

There is a reason. It might be something that happened in the past, or is currently happening. It might be they want to lose weight. I’m not a doctor, but I find it hard to believe smoking can do that. Let’s talk about yesterday. The problem with the past is that it is a squatter. We sweep it, vacuum it, disinfect it but it lingers on. Ideally, we should forget people and things that caused up pain. Time is a great healer, someone said or wrote somewhere. Not all the time. We avoid sitting down, because memories bubble up when we are idle. That’s why we are always on the go, rearranging furniture we rearranged last week; helping out at the homeless shelter although we silently blame them for their situation; attending Trump’s ‘I’m Innocent” rallies or calling kids and friends who don’t want to be called.

What is the alternative? Smoking, to erase from memory, what happened in the past. In only we could forget. Problem is, there are things we must not never forget, otherwise they’ll resurface, making the world even more dangerous than it is.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

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