Although we often raise issues that stress the consequences of smoking on your health and wellbeing, this is not intended to be part of a scare campaign.

Our strategy is not to scare you, because we know that such scare tactics do not work. We are simply trying to understand, together with you, why they don’t work. You already know that one out of two smokers dies prematurely of a smoking related disease, so why don’t you stop smoking immediately? The facts of the matter are that you ignore the obvious and choose denial religiously and tenaciously? How can this be?

Let’s try to explore a couple of possibilities.

a.  I keep on smoking because I am ‘special’ and hence it is not going to happen to me.

or …

b.  I can keep on smoking because I am ‘in control’ and hence it is not going to happen to me.

These beliefs may be the root of the problem. The facts are that smoking breeds disease and premature death. But talk to a smoker about this, and she or he just refuses to take the message in. They are not interested in even hearing it; they turn away irritated. Also, research demonstrates that general practitioners are reluctant to encourage their patients to quit smoking. This is because they fear losing patients to another practitioner who doesn’t ‘bug’ people about their smoking problem.

How can it be?

How can it be that you would rather not hear the message? How can it be that it just does not register with you?

The tobacco industry has had to conform and, much to their displeasure, print a warning from the Government or Surgeon General on each packet of cigarettes. Some of these warnings are absolutely outrageous – they proclaim that smoking kills, that smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema, that it is a major cause of heart diseases, and that it risks the lives of other people.

Nevertheless, a smoker can hold a packet of cigarettes in his or her hands and be completely oblivious to these messages.

It is madness!

How can this be?

a.  I am ‘special’ and hence it is not going to happen to me

Some people have this notion that they are exceptionally special. As children we often think that the entire world revolves around us, that we are very important beings (although ‘the others’ may not know this yet), and that we are very special and unique. We are very different, while ‘the others’ are just part of the herd. We may feel as if we are under some special providence, and that god or some other deity is watching over us and protecting us.

As we grow up, most of us maintain these notions. Deep inside, we still think we are special – we think that we are different. We believe in that special providence and so conclude that ‘the disaster’ that often befalls others is not going to happen to us.

Do you want to continue living under a delusion?

Are you one of those people who needs a rough wake-up call to reality, god forbid.

Please wake up!

You may be special, very special, but so are we all.

Please be more humble and tame the hubris and vanity that is so typical of our silly species. Only some 500 years ago we insisted that we were the center of creation and that everything, the sun and planets and the entire universe, revolved around us. We now know for a fact that our planet Earth is a small and quite inconsequential planet on just another insignificant solar system, on the fringe of a not-that-important galaxy.

We now know that there are billions of galaxies out there in the vast universe, but are we awestruck and inspired? No, we still think that our is the most special and most important planet in the entire universe. We cannot even start to fathom the immensity of the universe, but we are pretty confident that we are the only intelligent living beings to live in it. This is a very unintelligent notion.

And this vanity is also the source of our internal and private feelings as individuals. The feelings that we are so special, so different from the rest, and that we have special providence. Sure, it can happen to ‘the others’, but it is not going to happen to us.

Wake up!

It can happen to you too. All of those people who are sick and dying from smoking-related diseases thought just as you did. They too thought they were special, that they were different, and that it wasn’t going to happen to them. But it did.

When it does happen to us, it’s a terrible shock. And after the shock comes the reluctant acceptance – what a humbling experience this is, and how quickly we come back to our senses. We realize then that we are all just vulnerable and fragile mortals – we wake up to life and appreciate every passing day as if it were our last.

Do you need such a rough awakening to make you more humble?

Why don’t you use your intelligence and commonsense and have them work for you?

Next time you grab a pack of cigarettes, read the warning printed on it with a different attitude. Read it as if it were a personal message to you from the Government or Surgeon General. You are so special that you are being warned personally. If this is the case, perhaps there is some special providence for you – you are being forced to realize that you have to wake up and act now!