You yourself don't have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality. Seamus Heaney

 

Disempowerment

I imagine a hypothetical Utopia, and how dismal the experience of life is in comparison. 

In a constant state of succumbing to others, or consequence, life feels more like a prison than true liberation. 

Pain is mother nature's way of enslaving it's creations. 

To be pushed beyond endurance thresholds, mother nature knocks us off, one by one. There's nothing empowering about that. 

Take away disempowerment, and power isn't "a thing." 

It was the closest to purgatory that I've ever experienced while I've been living. Dave Thomas

 

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. Buddha

 

Conformity, or consequences.

I disagree with anti smoking campaigns. This is my body. It belongs to me to do with what I wish, and I enjoy my ciggarettes.

I'm the one who suffers any pain that happens to it, so, I can be assured that my body is mine. 

I also disagree with the consequencial dynamics at play if, and when I get that terminal illness diagnosis, for my smoking out of spite for a set of dynamics presented to me by mother nature, that I must adhere to, or else. I must meet a requirement at all times, or I can be an outcast. I choose to be an outcast. 

So many people have suffered an unjust lot in life, then succumbed to the dying process, often in a psychological dungeon, that is, the hospital, on their deathbed. This is very disempowering, and it's only a matter of time before mother nature herself, reeps some consequence for creating life, just to make it suffer all that pain.