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Cigarettes are not a drug. They are a tool.

Sometimes I am struck nearly speechless by the fact that we've been born into this crazy, incomprehensible world without so much as a fucking handbook to guide us. It would require either a loving, merciful and omnipotent god to design such a test for mankind, or a tremendously cruel one.

And all we have in this world to guide us towards right action are the ephemeral feelings that blossom deep within our hearts*.

So, for those of you who have not experienced it, you cannot imagine what a revelation the cigarette is. Lighting up feels like having control over your own destiny for the first time. You have assigned yourself a place in the world. For five to seven minutes you will be sitting or standing here, smoking a cigarette. And for those few moments, you're free.

A cigarette is the gift of a short interval of time that is completely free from obligations. Imagine that feeling of peace and freedom that you get in the bathroom, but wherever and whenever you want, and it doesn't smell quite as bad. It's impossible to imagine what freeing yourself from the burden of having to do or care about anything feels like, even for the briefest of intervals. Anything that happens during those ciggie minutes is purely and entirely a gift. You can converse. You can think about whatever you like. For a brief moment, you actually manage to free your own mind. The mind that you never even knew, until you lit up, had been colonized by worries.

That freedom is a revelation. It feels like how man was meant to live. Is it surprising then, that a significant fraction of Synners have, over the years, made cigarettes a large part of their lives? They've sat, isolated, on the front porch, staring off into the distance as the smoke danced off the top off their firestick. Or, forced together for a five minutes at a time, five to ten times a day, for months, they’ve allowed awkward introductions to become enthusiastic greetings and lit cigarette after cigarette, purposefully off-sync with each other, so the other will feel obliged to light another, and stay for just a few more minutes, until that tiny flame has burned away the night.

*Also the wisdom of our elders, but we know how much that's worth.