I'm an occasional smoker. I got in the bad habit of smoking at work on my breaks. That was a bad, bad idea. I'm trying to quit completely now and it is much more difficult this time around! If I don't smoke on break, it feels like I'm not even having a break! Haha, worse than that, if I do smoke I have that horrible nagging feeling that I'm betraying my future children. Terrible feeling guilt is.
I've known people, some close friends, that had parents die while they were relatively young. Regardless of my feelings on death, I have to deal with the fact that now there is one more person that will be directly effected by my health. That is an uncomfortable notion for me. As much as I would like for everyone to have no fear in death, it is a fact of life that we all care to some extent about the death of someone or ourselves. I can say I am unafraid of death, but I cannot say I am unafraid of the effect my death would have on those that love me.
So why all this talk of death? No reason really, but it has been crossing my mind the more I realize just what is happening in my wife's body. I knew smoking was a risk to my health and I've thought about quitting. It wasn't until finding out about my unborn child that it really hit me. Suddenly I want to scrub my lungs clean, take back all the cigs I smoked, and rid my body of any cells that could be copying the wrong information from cell to cell, thus sealing my demise.
Morbid, depressing, and bleak. Not at all how I view death. Not at all how I want our child to view death either. Death can come at any moment, by chance, by intent, by one's own doing. There are steps one can take to potentially prolong life, but when the clock is up, it is up. Being careful is good, not being paranoid. Quitting smoking is being careful. I am not admitting defeat to death and the fear of it.
I want my child to understand that everything that lives does, in fact, die. I want that understanding to include a cautious comfort with the idea. Not because of some deity, not because of religion or the shallow concept of an eternal afterlife. Even though death is frightening, unknown, and uncomfortable, it is just one of the infinitely beautiful systems in this universe. Birthdays are fun because they don't happen every day. Concerts are a blast because they don't last for years. Life is what it is because we all know it will eventually end. All the molecules that came from the very universe in which we live will eventually cease to be our bodies. What we are now will return to the universe that formed it.
"Star stuff contemplating the stars." - Carl Sagan
I've known people, some close friends, that had parents die while they were relatively young. Regardless of my feelings on death, I have to deal with the fact that now there is one more person that will be directly effected by my health. That is an uncomfortable notion for me. As much as I would like for everyone to have no fear in death, it is a fact of life that we all care to some extent about the death of someone or ourselves. I can say I am unafraid of death, but I cannot say I am unafraid of the effect my death would have on those that love me.
So why all this talk of death? No reason really, but it has been crossing my mind the more I realize just what is happening in my wife's body. I knew smoking was a risk to my health and I've thought about quitting. It wasn't until finding out about my unborn child that it really hit me. Suddenly I want to scrub my lungs clean, take back all the cigs I smoked, and rid my body of any cells that could be copying the wrong information from cell to cell, thus sealing my demise.
Morbid, depressing, and bleak. Not at all how I view death. Not at all how I want our child to view death either. Death can come at any moment, by chance, by intent, by one's own doing. There are steps one can take to potentially prolong life, but when the clock is up, it is up. Being careful is good, not being paranoid. Quitting smoking is being careful. I am not admitting defeat to death and the fear of it.
I want my child to understand that everything that lives does, in fact, die. I want that understanding to include a cautious comfort with the idea. Not because of some deity, not because of religion or the shallow concept of an eternal afterlife. Even though death is frightening, unknown, and uncomfortable, it is just one of the infinitely beautiful systems in this universe. Birthdays are fun because they don't happen every day. Concerts are a blast because they don't last for years. Life is what it is because we all know it will eventually end. All the molecules that came from the very universe in which we live will eventually cease to be our bodies. What we are now will return to the universe that formed it.
"Star stuff contemplating the stars." - Carl Sagan
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