One day, perhaps relaxing at the lake, or maybe camping I had an interesting thought. For no reason I started pondering why do I think what I think? Why do I believe what I believe? I thought this was interesting because before this moment I never stopped to think about why I believed what I did. Could I have built a whole belief system without ever thinking how these beliefs came to be so ingrained in me?
I started down the process of what I believed and why. Some of my earliest memories floated into my thoughts. One that I remember fondly is my parents sitting on the couch smoking cigarettes, and talking quietly. The sunshine was pouring its rays in through the windows. It must not have been summer time because all the windows were closed.
So here I am, a young child, and the room is filling with small billowing clouds of cigarette smoke floating in the air, looking like approaching fog in a scary movie. I remember sitting on the floor looking at the clouds of smoke moving lazily around the room filling up the clear spots. Just like the clouds I would see outside. I thought how fun it would be to fly through them!
So I did want any little kid would do seeing the smoke and thinking about the clouds outside. I stood up, put my arms straight out from my side and pretended to be an airplane as I ran around the room tilting to and fro. It is such a happy memory from when I was a child. Everything was right with the world. As young children we play, sleep, and play some more, such is our world at that age.
My next thought was thinking about my beliefs and why did I start smoking when I did? I thought of all the not smoking teaching I had in school when I was older, not the specifics, but the general pertinent points. I remember coming home from school and parroting to my folks how bad smoking was for them, and asking them if they would quit? Back in those days, some doctors still advised their patients to either take up smoking because it would help them relax, or keep smoking for those same reasons. My parents doctor was in that group, so they said.
When smoking and other poor health habits caught up with my Dad, he was forced to go to the hospital having a major heart attack. Not the minor ones, he thought he had suffered from previously that he chose to blame on indigestion. He lived through that heart attack, and was instructed by the doctor that treated him to quit smoking, and start walking at least a mile a day.
One of my fathers brothers had a heart attack within the year (same health habits), and the doctor gave him the same instructions. Quit smoking and exercise to heal his heart and lengthen his life. I remember my Father and Uncle talking after my uncle had been released from the hospital. They were sitting on the porch smoking, discussing their heart attacks and the doctors instructions. It did not take them long to agree the doctors were wrong. They agreed that quitting smoking, and exercising would place too much dangerous stress on their hearts. It would probably kill them. They both agreed with this thought, sitting on the porch smoking.
As I worked through this line of smoking, I knew why it was so easy for me to start smoking. I knew then much of what I believed in, and sometimes believed in strongly came from the earliest memory’s of my world as a child. Almost everything from what foods I did and did not like, to my faith was an auto install from when I was a child. It sure was disconcerting to think that a large part of my belief system came from a time when I was too young to question what was going on in my young child life. I felt suddenly like I was standing at the edge of he Grand Canyon. So started the journey of evaluating almost every thought and belief I ever held. I was already a non smoker by this time…thankfully.
Once I arrived at this point, I knew why they believed what they did, and how haphazard my own beliefs might be. It is a serious undertaking to think that everything you think you know may be wrong and you are living in a belief system that is built on sand that could wash away any moment. I have found it is better for my life, to go through the validating, and throw away process of everything I believed in than to simply wrap myself in what was the cotton candy forming the bedrock of my life.
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