The Exception

The question "smoking + drlove’s beautiful skin ingredients + unknown variable = effin' awesome skin?" really caught my attention, given my current state of mind. Over the last few days, I've posted three blogs: Closure, True Closure, and Guilt.

It may be hard to see how those posts relate to this health question. You'll see in a minute.

The questioner says he/she is making healthy choices across the board, with the single exception of a smoking habit. He/she asks: "[I]s there anything i can do aside from the obvious to help improve the state of my skin?"

The analogy to my blog posts is the following: Over the past 24 years, I have spent 12 years together with my ex-wfe, and 8 years and counting with my current wife. In almost all respects, I've been a pretty great guy -- you know, energetic, upbeat, intelligent, nice, a provider, encouraging, bold, adventerous, maybe even sympathetic now and then, blah, blah, blah. What's not to love?

But this week I've been looking over these past 24 years and have noticed that the love of my ex-wfe toward me went on life suport somehere in the middle of those 12 years, and pretty much dried up in the last couple of our years together.

Same thing seems to be happening with my current wife. Good thing we have a toddler who takes up most of her attention, otherwise she might long ago have joined my ex-wfe and headed for the hills too.

(Are you following the analogy so far? Here it is: (1) My relationships with my wives = the questioner's body. (2) Pretty great guy = "i do all of the following: [lots of healthy practices]". (3) Strange, annoying symptom of multiple wives heading for the hills = "my skin has been garbage since mid 2007") 

Here's where the analogy breaks down. The questioner knows what the problem is. He/she is smoking.

With my story, I didn't know what the problem was until this week, when my ex-wife blew through town, and the two of us caught up on old times for the first time in 10 years. To my thick skull, that otherwise banal event was like Hurricane Jennifer blowing through town.

In the aftermath of that hurricane, I learned this week that I am the most selfish human I have ever met. I don't think I ever remember doing something for sombody else just because they wanted it, motivated by serving them. 

I mean, all my life, I've done things that I wanted to do, that had the side benefit of serving other people (like my two wives).

But this week, I finally learned there is a huge difference between doing somthing specifically to serve someone, and doing something to serve yourself that happens to serve that other person. The actual outward behavior might be identical. But the meaning to all parties concerned is radically different.

So my case is even more subtle than this "healthy diet, with the exception of smoking" case. My case is "nice guy who does nice things." I can see why the smoker should have problems with his/her skin. Even the smoker can see that. Why should I have problems with my wives? From the outside, I look like any other nice guy.

Here's the punch line: one exception, if it's significant enough, can blow up all the good stuff. I don't think that life works in a linear way. i.e. "If I do 9 out of 10 things well, then I'm doing 90% well, and 90% is good, right?!"

No.

In fact, maybe it's even opposite. I mean, maybe if we were doing only 2 out of 10 things well, and we were still alive, and our wives still stuck around, then maybe that would be workable. From the marriage perspective, the idea is that you are such a shit in almost every respect that she won't even notice anything particular because you're a mess anyway, and she's staying with you for some reason other than love.

But when we're doing 9 out of 10 things well, that 10th "bad" thing that we're doing is now so obviously painful that it wreaks havoc. So maybe the "real world" is different from school after all.

Anyway, this is just a long way to say: If I was you, I'd find some way to stop smoking, man.

(Try searching for "smoking" in the search box above.)