Quiting breathing, or if you prefer Smoking

Why is it that all of our lives we are told to learn, and yet we never somehow manage to corner that market? Parents, teachers, relatives, and friends all tell us things born of experience,and yet until we suffer the consequences it refuses to sink in and "teach" us.

I think it is safe to say that in my own experience, learning can be painful. I absolutely remember a day in junior high where medical professionals came to class to show us what a human lung looked like when it got intimate with cigarettes. I swore it would not happen to me... that's what I get for swearing.

Luckily for me it was Emphysema that found me first as it could have been much worse.

Breathing is a very natural thing to all living beings. We take it for granted. We abuse the privilege. Take that privilege away, or alter it, and the world looks quite different very quickly.

Pick up a five pound sack of potatoes and walk to the checkout with it. If the trip is longer than ten or fifteen feet your lungs go into overdrive, feeding the heart and muscles the oxygen they must have to perform. If for any reason they are unable to perform this simple task, one we seldom realize they are doing, bad things happen.

Panic quickly follows a fun dose of asphyxia with the heart pounding out a feeble attempt to feed water to a community that needed air. Unpleasant? An inadequate word to describe such a thrilling event.

Imagine working under those conditions in a construction environment, knowing that sooner or later blacking out was a very likely event... being on a ladder was no longer an option. Now imagine telling your family you can longer support them. Are you having fun yet?

If I could give this world one thing it would be to live like this for one day. Tobacco would no longer be an industry, and the world would be a far better place.

Give yourself the gift of clean air. It is a free gift, and will cost you nothing, but in turn it will give you everything. This is NOT a gift that can be given to another. It doesn't work that way. It is a personal gift. One that keeps giving long after the wrapping is gone.