"Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because its the only way they can get anything really finished."

-Chuck Palanhuik

I'm craving a cigarette right now, but I can't have one.

I won't have one.

My life is surrounded by smoke, both literally and figuratively. Between the bars, the music, and the general lifestyle: smoke. With every libation poured in these local watering holes: smoke.

The keen eye notices a metaphor for these little social dances we engage in. Everywhere is smoke, but so few fires.

A year ago, I stopped smoking for the third time, and barring the occasional alcohol-sponsored indulgences, I've been surprisingly consistent in my avoidance. But as much as I don't want to smoke anymore, as much as the cigarettes hurt my now healed lungs, the craving is always there. Biting, throbbing it's call into my ears.

...inhale...

Last week, a close family friend expired from an intense concentration of lung cancer. He'd been smoking for thirty-odd years in a constant, mutually parasitic relationship with the Camel company.

He was a beautiful man, and he left a beautiful family behind him. He imported fine wines from Italy, he climbed mountains, he sang in a rock band. He lived where others aspired.

The problem was that his voracious appetite for life extended to his cigarette habit, enabling him to consume over a pack a day.

Four months ago, he was a vivacious and virile man with an undiscovered grapefruit-sized tumor in his lung. Today, he is the thorn of absence stuck in the side of all who knew him.

Cancer literally sucked the life out of him.

In the few months between the forecast and the event of his death, his face and body appeared to age twenty years. What was once oak withered to balsa, and his family could do nothing but watch it happen.

Towards the end, he couldn't hold down even the most basic meal yet he spent nearly every hour of the day watching the food network, simply to satisfy his love of gourmet cuisine. This annoyed his wife to no end, but I think it just exemplifies the beauty of acceptance and true love:

To want what you can't have out of appreciation, not self-torture.

And in the process of writing that, I realize one of the more insidious portions of my own human nature. I'm staring at this screen, attempting to piece together the perfect condolence letter, and all I want to do is have a cigarette.

To want what you shouldn�t have out of self-torture, not appreciation.