I was leaving Hollywood after seeing Star Trek (AMAZING!!) with some friends. It was midnight so I thought it prudent to go to the local 7-11 for a vitamin water and a pack of smokes. I left the 7-11 and lit my cigarette while driving down Sunset Blvd. all the while listening to Wilco's "A.M." The windows of my car were down as to avoid the unpleasant odor of a smoker's car and I was enjoying some of the last cool weather of Spring with the heater blasting. This continued as I got on the 101 South and all of a sudden it happened.
While the wind howled thorough my car at 70MPH I was all of a sudden attentive to the fact that I was smoking. I realized I didn't really feel like smoking but I was doing so compulsively, and the conversation started. I was confronted by a voice in my own mind, while Wilco drowned in the rushing wind, that simply said, "What are you doing?"
Immediately my brow furrowed as if I were an indignant child responding to a correcting parent. I responded, "I'm smoking."
And then the deepest philosophical question followed by the concerned voice, "Why?"
I had no response since I was already aware I was being compulsive (AKA addiction.) I felt no shame or guilt but all the time my brow was angry and unmoving. The voice said with heartfelt concern, "You have to stop."
Now, wanting to change the subject in my mind, I went to think about writing. The voice said, "You will be a writer." My brow lifted, but the subject at hand was immediately brought back in to my minds eye while I sailed down the 5 South.
The loving voice had parted and left a final thought: You will die. Not as a message of doom, but as a reminder of my mortality. My days on this Earth are numbered. I was instantly sobered and when I went to take another drag of my cigarette I realized that the wind had blown it out.
I will remember that final thought because it came to me as if it was a man's dying words filled with desperate compassion. I realized those were a man's dying words of desperate compassion. He died because he knew I would too and so that while I do live I have the opportunity to live fully if I so choose.
Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.
