smokers

You are 100% WRONG!!!

There are NOT smokers who have middos, brains, & love their children!!!

No, you are wrong.

I am not a smoker, but I am the son of a smoker. My mother has been smoking for over forty years. She began, foolishly, as a teen. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out to you, nicotine is very addictive and that addiction is a tough one to break. Some people are able to overcome it, and some people are not. My mother, unfortunately, is one of the latter. It’s not for a lack of trying… I *know* she has tried very, very hard to quit. Alas, to this point, it has not happened.

But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have middos. On the contrary, I look to my mother as a role model for middos. She is one of the kindest, most caring people in the world. Her emunah in HKBH dwarfs anything I could ever hope to achieve in my life.

In addition, my mother is one of the wisest people I know. True, she is not college educated. In fact, being a ba’alas t’shuva, she never even went to a yeshiva. But she is one of the wisest, most clear-headed people I know. You may argue that she can’t be very wise if she knows what smoking does. But, alas, we all do foolish things when we were young. She did, I did, and I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that you did too. The difference between you and I and her is that the foolish things we did didn’t leave us physically addicted. So we did our foolish things and moved on. She cannot. We all mature… and if she had a choice on whether or not to start smoking today, she wouldn’t. But you can’t turn the clock back to the 1960s — you have to deal with the reality as it exists today — and today she is addicted.

Lastly, how can you possibly say that someone who smokes doesn’t love their children with such definitiveness. Do you know every smoker? I know smokers personally, including those who raised perfectly normal and healthy kids. Considering you don’t know my back story, and you have no idea how much my mother sacrificed to raise my sister and I as frum Jews, you certainly have no grounds to make such a categorical claim that smokers don’t love their children. How could you even make such a claim? Is it because they may cause their kids heartache with disease later on? If so, would you say that people who are overweight don’t love their kids? Would you say that people who don’t exercise on a regular basis don’t love their kids? Would you say that people who do anything that entails any slight bit of risk more than the norm doesn’t love their kids?

That being said, are there smokers who are, in fact, don’t have middos, don’t have brains and don’t, in fact, love their children? Sure. But since you seem to love to live in a black-and-white world, you’re ready to reject every smoker as a drooling idiotic boor who hates their family. Well, guess what? People are more complex than that. People have their good points and bad points. I doubt any of us are perfect enough that we can say that our middos are perfect. I doubt any of us can say that all of our actions are perfectly rational. And I doubt any of us with kids can say that everything we’ve done by our kids has, in hindsight been perfect.

I respect my mother greatly. And yes, I can separate her smoking from the rest of her attributes. I hate the fact that she smokes, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing the fact that otherwise, she is a wonderful person.

But yeah, I understand. To you she has rotten middos, is a blabbering idiot and hates me. Or perhaps maybe you’ll learn not to generalize large groups of people based on a single attribute.

The Wolf

Wolfish~ I love what you wrote & how articulate & passionate you were about your beloved Mother, amush.

on a side note: I didn’t realize that I may be as old as your Mom!?! :-O

Suggesting that every single person who smokes is stupid, lacking middos, etc, is simply idiotic. There are plenty of wonderful, caring people who just made a mistake at some point in their lives (often during their teenage years) and are still suffering from it. And there are plenty of boys who smoke, yet would make wonderful husbands and fathers. Pass them up at your own risk.

takish mamish:

“Wouldn’t anyone want to marry someone a lil more stable than that?!”

Smoking is a chemical addiction, and has nothing to do with a “stable” a person is. A smoker can be the most stable person in the world, and a non-smoker can be completely unstable.

my grandfather smoked in the early 1900’s. When he realized it was unhealthy, he quit cold turkey. Just like that. Not easy, but apparently doable.

Hope this gives chizuk to people out there.

v’nishmartem miod l’nafshoseichem

“It should be pointed out that my mother has an extensive medical history and takes quite a few medications for a number of different conditions”

It would stand to reason, any long time smoker will have many medical conditions. All the more reason to quit. Let her ask her PCP about combining the patch with Chantix and/or Zyban.

“She has serious and long-term conditions that are completely unrelated to smoking.”

Really? If you don’t mind me asking -which ones? Smoking is usually the cause or exacerbates many long-term conditions.

Really? If you don’t mind me asking -which ones? Smoking is usually the cause or exacerbates many long-term conditions.

I’m not at liberty to say. Trust me when I say that she would have had a long and complicated medical history even if she never smoked a single cigarette in her life. The fact that she does smoke adds additional problems, of course, but her main medical problems cannot be laid at the doorstep of tobacco.

The Wolf