Fetters: Tobacco

The advent of a new year, the cockcrow of a fresh decade: however inauspicious it feels, tradition dictates that we make some perfunctory resolution, to improve our sorry selves.  We erect these monuments to self-delusion fully expecting them to topple after only a few days, a few hours, a matter of minutes.  For a society that pretends to cherish personal freedom how eager we are to clap ourselves in irons.

In this series I invite you to consider a handful of these fetters that keep us bound to our lower selves.  Would that we could disentangle from them all and leave behind that grimacing ape that pursues his every pleasure without forethought.  First let us consider tobacco, an example that should be clear to everyone – even the most avid connoisseurs know that they are destroying themselves.

A chief hindrance to the smoker’s escape is the abrasive nag who tells him, without experience, why he should quit.  Would that they were the ones who smelled wretched, squandered money, had poor health and died early.  The smoker has blundered into a tar pit; these sanctimonious people admonishing him about the dangers of tar pits only make him want to drown.

In spite of these philistines, he must do everything in his power to escape.  In shaking off this heavy chain he is not identifying with those contemptible idiots, as he fears – his identity will remain not only intact, but stronger, now that he is free to walk upright among them.

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