"Why I Keep Coming Back to Smoking"
by: Kelly Quirino from The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/why-i-keep-coming-back-to-smoking/281938/
This article is about the author and her journey through how she started smoking to now. Kelly started smoking at 14. She dressed like a lot of kids that go to Booker T., only with more of a nineties grudge feel. She used to smoke just to look cool, but then it became more than that, smoking became a part of her identity. Her dad found her smoking at a concert and he was very angry, and in response she said she would quit, but then walked back to her room and smoked another cigarette. When she got pregnant she easily stopped smoking, but soon afterward found herself starting again. She finds that when she is not smoking she has nothing to do with her hands, she gets bored and anxious.
This article is more about how we are all dependent or addicted to something. Even though smoking is really bad for you, basically like buying lung cancer, the author needed to smoke like people need video games or other people. She could not see the negative repercussions of her actions because she was blinded by the ways smoking helps her. Smoking created her, she started smoking so early that now it is so embedded into her that a life without smoking wouldn't even be a life. Everybody has something like smoking in their life, and we only see the positive of it. I have been drawing since I was a kid, but does that mean that drawing is good? What constitutes something being "good"? Who would I be if I did not draw? What would I do instead of draw for all those hours? I think that if we would all sit back and think about the things we spend the most time doing, and think about the things we actually care about in a comparative way we could easily see why people are so unhappy. Instead of doing things that we love we end up doing things we don't care about because we are told to, and in turn end up wasting so much time doing stuff that doesn't matter. Until we recognize the cycle we live in, we can not escape the slippery slope that ends with unfulfilled adulthood.
Sam Smathers 4th
After smoking for her whole life, it has become a part of her and this is very dangerous. Although it may be hard, it is crucial that the woman find another hobby to keep her busy. If she doesn't her life will be dramatically cut. This can apply to everyone. You need to find something that not only makes you happy but also is a positive influence in your life.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, we sometimes get into a routine or habit of doing something because we have always done it. We would feel wrong if we stopped. However, we also do habitual things to gain or maintain society's approval. In order to understand how important it is to do the things that we love and feel passionately about, we must remember how fleeting life is. This will also encourage us to help others in their lives and pursuits in order to make the world a better place.
ReplyDeleteByron Otis- It's understandable that she should feel lost without smoking, and you make a good point about our routines and loves that we are trapped in. However, one should attempt to find ones self in routines and loves that are beneficial to ones self and others.
ReplyDeleteYou make some interesting points. Perhaps we do all get lost in the monotony of hobbies and routine. I think that our hobbies begin to define us; they become embedded into our persona and we are blank without them. We all have personality traits, but many of our quirks, the thing that we spend our time doing and define us, we have just randomly assumed at some point and clung to. Once these things become a part of us, we do genuinely care about them, if not before. However, even if these things are not an essential part of who we are and just an assumed facade, a random happenstance masked as an intrinsic value, they can still be good. Personas are a part of human survival and as long as we do not become completely lost in obsession with maintaining them, they can keep us stable and help us face our lives. Smoking is clearly a harmful routine to maintain, but many of the other possible hobbies if not essential to our personality, are essential to our sanity.
ReplyDeleteFelicia Padilla 5th period: It is really hard to recover from addiction, especially a nicotine one. My dad smokes a lot, and he has tried to quit, but he just can't. It is a very sad thing when someone becomes addicted because they no longer have complete control of their life.
ReplyDeleteI think that since for the longest time, it was perceived as the cool thing to do rather than as a dangerous habit, it was easy for her to continue her addiction without seeing it as wrong. Now that she wants to stop it, she has to end both her lifelong habit and the way that she copes with things since many people use cigarettes for times of stress. This double factor of having to both restrict yourself from something that you've done for forever and also the loss of a constant variable is, I'm assuming, very weakening. I hope that she, and others, are able to prevail and end their addiction before it takes their life.
ReplyDelete