Smoking confounds me

29 May, 2026

Almost every morning I wake up, make myself a coffee, head over to the couch to catch up on the world, and as I pass our balcony window, I have a direct view down to my neighbour's balcony across from us. My neighbour is out there smoking 94.5% of the times that I do this morning ritual.

Grit is her name, and she is the local that has been in the are forever and everyone knows her. A shock of white/grey hair, a roaring laugh tinged with the crust of her addiction, you are 72.4% likely to see Grit with a cigarette in her hand if you see her out in the street. She's great. One day I was feeling particularly saddened by the world and my state in it, so I went over the street to our local cafe which has a gorgeous sun-drenched, south-facing terrace facing onto a large open grassy lot, to drink a coffee and enjoy being by myself, when I see Grit come into the lot with six puppies and their mum, Snowy. Of course I had to go and say hi and play with the puppies.

There's almost nothing as joyous, as depression-curing, as blissfully forget-all-your-worries, as playing with a bunch of puppies. They all run at you, jumping on your leg, then they get bored and start playing with each other, nipping, growling, squeaking, and I swear I almost cried. Grit didn't know it, but she turned my day completely around when I saw her and the pups.

Grit has a hacking cough, one that echoes throughout our courtyard with neighbourly facing balconies, and in the five years since we've been here, it's been a fairly omnipresent noise. One that makes my toes curl because it's pretty clear what it is. It's a deeply rooted disease that stems from the cigarette in her hand. (As I typed that line, guess what I heard?)

Some days Grit isn't on her balcony for a few days at a time. I get worried about her, but always my worries are allayed and she pops back out a few days later, doing what you'd expect.

Four weeks ago or so, as we're coming back from Kaufland with our groceries, we bump into Grit and get to chatting. She tells us she's just had a heart-attack. She was in her apartment, by herself, and it just overcame her and she couldn't do anything. By chance, her neighbour came by and realised something was wrong, and managed to get an ambulance to the apartment to help.

Grit's doctor told her that her heart capacity is somewhere around 30% and the strain on it means she should start to cut back on her two favourite things: cigarettes and smoking weed. She tells us she's cut the weed out, which is a start.

I'd noticed Grit a lot less on her balcony those first few weeks, but this week she's back out there most mornings, doing what she does best. I don't get it and it saddens me deeply to see addiction just take over someone's life like this.

A few smokers I've met in my life have told me the same thing: smoking is the one reliable thing they've had in their life and for that reason, they'll never give it up. This rationale is so perplexing to me and I presume to them too. It's been told to me with a certain arrogance, as if I should challenge it, that all it made me think was that they knew it was an excuse to ridiculous to discuss, so best drop it all together so they can just smoke in peace.

In 2009, we lost a member of our family to smoking: Uncle David. He was 42 or 43, I forget now, and loved cigarettes. One of my fondest memories is sitting with him on a balcony in Viña del Mar, Chile, watching the sunset over the Pacific, smoking two packets of durries whilst drinking a bottle of JB whiskey, discussing the world. I have no idea what we talked about. That was in 2008.

When David died, I gave up smoking forever. Thankfully I was doing it just to be cool and don't have a rabidly addictive personality, so it was placed in the pile of wrongful youth activities and left there to rot where it belongs. What hurts the most from his death, is that it was due to something so small and insidious, something that we just accept as a thing people do. What a waste.

However, I'm conflictingly of the opinion that everyone should be able to do what they want, as long as I preferably don't have to smell it or breathe it in. It's your body, do what you want, but I can't help but think of the people that come to the realisation that: this thing has metastasised inside of you and will now kill you, all because years and years ago you wanted to be cool; and how heartbreakingly stupid they must feel. Or maybe it's just me projecting my feelings onto their experience. Likely the latter. Maybe the thing that makes me sad and angry is the lie told to people to get them to start.¹

But when I see Grit, who is not as old as she looks even though her skin is pallid and greying, her hair greyer still, yet her eyes reflect her age where I believe she's only in her early 50s; and she's there, cigarette in hand, I wonder if she feels that same thing. Was it worth it? Does she feel stupid for her choice? Probably she doesn't, and to her, and many like her, it was worth it then and still is now.

#2026 #life