With the number of people subject to cancer these days one aught to ask the question - Can I afford to live so that I increase my risk of cancer ?
One might argue - Its my life and I should be able to enjoy it as I please.
But the truth is that we owe our existence to a whole range of factors we may take for granted and whatever our family or other relational circumstances, we are living as part of a social structure which relies on our participation just as we rely on others for our happiness, our mental and physical health and our spiritual and emotional well-being.
Take smoking for example. The incidence of cancer in people who smoke is not just significantly high but high enough to make the choice to smoke a very serious decision. This is especially true if one has a history of cancer in the family.
It is extremely sad to see a man leave his family decades before he would due to the decision to smoke.
We tend to think it will not happen to us, and even when it takes someone close to us and we experience a period of heightened awareness, it soon fades and we continue believing that nothing bad will happen to us.
Even when the symptoms appear, we may ignore them and choose not to take the steps required to fight the disease until it is too late.
As one who has known many who have succumbed to cancer and very few who have survived it, I am acutely aware that people take this matter lightly and fail to embrace the responsibility to protect themselves and those who rely on them from this dreadful disease.
I have just witnessed a wonderful family lose their breadwinner, father, husband, brother and son due to this decision.
How would you feel, knowing you had deprived your family of all the things you would provide over the next few decades because of the desire to smoke. The devastation of such a loss on the individual members is really heartbreaking, and to be responsible for it is a burden I would not like to bear.
I remember sitting on a train station many years ago, observing an individual take out a cigarette and light it and breath the toxic fumes and finding it absurd. I imagined an alien intelligence witnessing this and reporting back that humans are clearly "not all there".
I gave up smoking in 1982 and I recommend this course of action to all who smoke and have anyone relying on them for happiness, health, livelihood or anything else.
Consider the extreme costs involved in treating cancer, the extreme suffering of both patient and family and the devastating effect on the finances and future and allow these factors to influence you to kick the habit.
Here is a link which provides information on the effects of smoking on the human body. Link
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