Go Forth and Appreciate!

A weird thing happened to me today, and I am in a terribly satisfied mood.

I am a big believer in living and loving for the moment. This does not mean spending all your money and indulging in base desires (although, when it comes to food, I do tend to believe in indulgence)- but it means not being afraid of the future, not letting yourself settle for something less than what you are looking for, and not waiting to appreciate people until they are gone. Rather like that quote, "Live as if you'll die tomorrow," which I tried to attribute to someone but has been, apparently, said by everyone and their mother, so screw it.

And so, today, I was in a very good mood and wrote a very appreciative letter to the Boyfriend, which is not terribly weird for me, although long letters are not something I do regularly- after all, if you're not in the mood, they take even more time and effort and become rather like work, something I tend to avoid (as part of the darker side of Living in the Moment).

When I finished, it was close to my bedtime and I was very sleepy. I trekked upstairs to tell my family I was going to bed, and on the way down, I slipped, a tiny tiny bit. I am a very clumsy person, so to me, this slip was barely worth noticing, since I didn't even fall on my ass, or bruise something, or even experience pain. Seriously, I moved less than an inch. But the part of my head that is aware of these sorts of things watched me fall all the way down the stairs and break my neck.

I don't experience visions very often, and I doubt this one was the work of anything more than an active and rather morbid imagination fueled by a love of detective shows, but it made me pause. I felt so fulfilled, having sent that letter. Don't get me wrong, dying right then would have sucked, but if dying were to have happened, I would have been so glad that I had sent the Boy that letter beforehand.

The point of this post is not that someday we will die and so we should do stuff before it's too late. The point isn't to focus on the dying, it's to focus on the living. I was thinking about this, before I wrote this post, and I was motivated to write a short letter to each of my friends, telling them why I believe they're wonderful. Telling someone they are appreciated can cheer someone up after a crappy day or keep them from committing suicide, but I am not trying to explain how I am surrounded by people who are at risk for offing themselves- I am just surrounded by people I love, and I'm lucky for that. I hope they know it- in fact, I told them, just in case they don't.

So go on, write a letter when the mood strikes, or make an appointment to meet a friend over some sort of amenable beverage, or make a short call. Don't force yourself to labour over something for hours and hours- it doesn't even have to be long, if you're not feeling verbose. But do me a favour. If you find yourself thinking of someone, even if you don't have that much to say, tell them. The only downside might be forcing yourself to deal with a little awkwardness, and that's a healthy thing to be doing, anyway.

Me and my prudish values* are disappointed in last night's How I Met Your Mother. To summarize, the show's in the middle of its fifth season, and the main plot point of last night's episode was that all the main characters are smokers and have been, unbeknownst to the audience, for the entire show. I didn't find episode was that funny, but I'm so sensitive to cigarettes that watching the episode made me a bit queasy, so I surfed the Interwebs to see what their zeitgeist reaction was.

I found things to be fairly mixed. Some people loved the episode, some don't disapprove of smoking but found it unfunny. (I assume the people without strong opinions didn't voice them.) Josh Lasser's article on Zap2It made the probably-observant point that the show perhaps had a tough time tonight with the non-smoking crowd. I don't think that non-smokers can ever really understand the insane lure of smoking." So maybe that's the reason for the split.

To get a better idea of the viewers, I also looked up U.S. cigarette smoking statistics, which informed me that about 20% (23.1% of men, 18.3% of women) of U.S. citizens smoke. If most of the people who don't smoke didn't find last night's episode funny, then, well, the episode was of poor taste. I do hope that smoking will return to the background as it did before, though. I've never associated with smokers, nor anyone who has begun smoking since I've known them, so from my probably-sheltered point of view, I've lost respect for the characters and the show. Actually, I just find the whole thing disgusting.

I suppose the person who wrote the episode was writing what they knew, but he ought to be aware of his audience. The first comment on the article above tells Josh Lasser: "please don't push your anti-smoking rhetoric onto people." (I thought it was nice that they said please.) I generally consider myself to be very open-minded on the scale of open-mindedness (or perhaps just extremely persuadable) but, thinking about it, I don't find anything wrong or persecuting about an 'anti-smoking rhetoric'. I mean, the boxes are required by law to say "Smoking Kills" on them, sometimes accompanied by pictures of various deformities. I can't think of anything more anti-smoking than that. Yeah, yeah, quitting is hard, but if you're going to smoke, you can be an adult and know the consequences of your actions. Like sounding like Harvey Fierstein. (And with that, I ostracize 20% of my readership.)

*Obviously not that prudish.