Cigarettes, stress, and age

Is there a relationship between stress and cigarettes? In our day to day life, we usually notice that people who smoke tend to have something bothering them. We seldom see people around us that smoke with a happy face. Is it they smoke because of stress, they stress because of smoking, or there is really no relationship between them.

Let's see. When a person stresses, he/she needs to relax and let's his/her mind settle without doing anything. For most of us, doing nothing seems like an action that's purposeless. What if he/she is smoking? Doesn't it provide a purpose for the "doing nothing" moment? It does, doesn't it? The same arguement can be used on drinking coffee as well. All these doings provide a purpose to a period of time when one needs to do nothing just to settle down his/her mind.

What about age? We see all the young teens that smoke. What stress do they have in that early age? Stress about getting a girlfriend, about the misunderstanding of their parents, about grades? None of that, I think. When we were teenager, smoking is a symbol of coolness. When we are adult in 20s and 30s, smoking is a symbol of stress. When we are after late 30s, smoking is a symbol of bad health.

In summary, people smoke for different reasons throughout their lives. All of all, people try to get rid of smoking for the same reason, health, and usually at a later age when lives are not that stressful. For people who have stress, smokers will smoke more, non-smoker will either start smoking or find some habits for them to be able to relax and calm down.

As I am done writing, I don't know what I am trying to express. I guess I have a lot going on in my mind. Perhaps, I should start smoking.

Relationships

In today's diversified society, relationship between 2 persons has become more complicated than ever. We not only have to deal with racial differences, but also religion, cultural, and language differences. Among all these differences, we deal with racial, cultural, and language differences in our day to day life among our friends, classmates, and co-workers. Because of that, learning how to deal with these differences is relatively easy. Though, the hardest to deal with is the religion differences, especially between spouses when it involves emotion. Even though it's the hardest, it's not impossible to resolve. The key to resolve differences are RESPECT and COMMUNICATION. Like friends, classmates, and co-workers, we learned to respect each others and communicate the differences with open mind.

Speak mind or say yes

How many times have we faced with a situation where you were asked to speak your mind but the responses you were getting afterward suggest otherwise. At the end, you felt like you should have said "yes". But then, what's the point of asking? If people can't accept that fact that everyone has their own opinions and we don't always agree with each others but the most important thing is the effort and the compromises we put in to get the work done, how do we really get along with people? Isn't this the fundamental of being a human, to compromise, to discuss the differences, and to agree on something that we feel would have the least unsatisfaction for everyone? We need this at work with co-workers, at home with family, and places with friends and so forth. While you were trying to do just that, what if the receiving end isn't willing to do so? What would you do then? To me, that's a misery that I have yet to solve. Until then, I will just say "yes".