Bible says:
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. (Matthew 6:14-15) (sound like a deal, right?)
I think I read it first as a kid when some part-time Missionary (for the lack of a better term) handed me over a pamphlet about Christianity. Since then, I began my experiments on forgiveness.
Especially on this day, Rakshabandhan festival, while on our way to visit our uncle’s place, we would pass through Central Jail where women were sitting in the park outside waiting to tie a rakhi to their prisoner brothers. The scene never failed to touch me. How easy it looked to forgive those ferocious criminals at the sight when a brother would hug his sister with a rakhi in his hand and tears in his eyes. That remained my annual lesson on forgiveness for 25 years.
After this, meditation further brought some light in my life when I learned how unscientific it was to not forgive anyone. But I also somehow misinterpreted that as a yogi I should be simply pushing away any feeling of hurt without facing it, which made me what I am now. A degenerated version of a yogi.
And that is how I gradually started converting my religious rituals into spiritual quests. For example, during fasting at sacred days I gave myself a target that I would be forgiving – People/ hurt/ grudge, which trust me is harder than starving yourself for a day. And, I was doing both!
So I can say it became a second nature to forgive murderers, thieves, and such offenders and to ‘consider’ forgiving people who caused hurt/ personal injury to you.
Absolutely not saying I have forgiven everyone, but I have tried. Every terrorist, thief, drug addict, sex offender, murderer has a story which might be a logical one given the circumstances and deserves forgiveness.
Except- smokers.
Smokers have no stories. They have only BS. You didn't eat or drink cigarettes to get addicted, you don't even get injected them in your body accidentally. None mixes that in your food behind your back.
You smoke at your own will, after reading the warning on the packet and in cinema halls. You deserve no mercy. You deserve to be socially (and sexually) boycotted.
From the bottom of my heart, I have sincere hatred for smokers.
Whether you smoke outside my office building or in my bathroom or 10,000 km away in your country, - I’ll find you and hate you.
Whenever I see someone smoking,i feel nothing for the person because I know deliberately they're punching holes in their own lungs, but the ones that I pity are the passive smokers:those who inhale the smoke from a smoker.I always feel that those fathers who smoke right in the presence of their kids, kids as young as less than a year; must be given the death sentence! And if you smoke where I am, well the law helps you,I wish to punch you in the throat to speed your demise!!
ReplyDeleteStars of the tinseltown - how views on cigarette smoking have changed over the years:
ReplyDeleteI smoke all the time, one after the other.~ Greta Garbo
"Now that I'm gone, I tell you: Don't smoke. Whatever you do, just don't smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn't be talking about any cancer. I'm convinced of that." ~ Yul Brynner [died of lung cancer]
I smoke, isn't that terrible? ~ Kate Hudson