OK. It is quite obvious that the smoking problem or excessive kilos is not a problem between us. Those are our individual problems and the best help you can offer to others (if you are sincere) would be sharing your own experience. I think I tried to share mine as it came to my mind.

In fact, anyone would realize that I am going through a special period in time. I am in the process of losing my father and the reason is his smoking habit. Hence the apparent touchy language of my previous post. I tried to reveal my feeling as much as my English would let me.

There must always be someone who does not quite like the tone or the words or even the mood with which an article is written. For your information, I hardly ever state that I like a message. It just may have a statistical significance. In my opinion, every opinion can be considered right in a certain context. Sometimes, people say they like my messages, sometimes people say they hate them. It is all up to them. I have nothing else to say about their preferences.

I used to smoke too. I was a chain smoker. It all started in the university. I was enjoying the freedom of being at the helm of my own life in a different city. My father was about my age then. He had no health problems. No one got burned out of smoking. It was just the cigarette burning one after another. Entrance was free, friends kept offering until they thought I became a freeloader who needs to pay for his own cigarettes. My mind was busy then. Perils of smoking were so low on my list, I did not give that any thought. Years followed one another. I became a regular smoker with firm preferences about the brand I smoke, the time I start smoking and the thing that I drank with it. Cigarette seemed to give me peace of mind and concentration when I was in need of a boost in my cognitive skills. It acted as a painkiller and a tranquilizer.

Then one day in February 2001, I decided to quit never to smoke again which I did. I dumped everything smoking gave me and regained my lung capacity. As a mild asthma sufferer, I would say that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. That was also the hardest decision with consequences so hard to endure. Years after quitting, I was still smoking in my dreams. I just did not light that single cigarette which saved me from relapsing to the smoking habit.

Now I ask myself this question: why would someone smoke knowing its hazards? I think many people (including myself) have tons of mild psychological disorders. These are so mild, we don´t recognize them easily. With many people around us suffering from similar problems, we sleep on those problems and resort to smoking and/or drinking for an easy cure. Smoking is the aspirin of temperament problems. The bad feeling goes away but the suffering remains. When you don´t smoke, you become more aware of your condition and seek help.

There is so much to say about the psychological, sociological and economic aspects of smoking. Like anything related to humans, it is so complicated. It is the tell-tale sign of a very serious social dysfunction.

Thank you. Smoking is the plague of the century. People must always go to the extremes before realizing what kind of a mistake they have been doing. My father stopped smoking months before the diagnosis but 60 years of smoking had already done enough harm. He has been suffering from COPD for a couple of years. Now, the cancer. How can anyone contrinue smoking knowing that the fate is invariably either of these two diseases. One of them causes people to get exhausted just by walking a few meters and the other dooming them to premature death. How irresponsible people get just for pleasure. I see chain-smoking mothers. Sources of bad examples are plenty. People tend to think life is endless at young age. Take Adele, this young singer see no problem declaring she would prefer smoking over becoming a mother. We need to become wiser...

No we both did what we thought right. There is no reason to regret. We could get bitter in the future too. This shows we ardently defend our causes and are willing to come to terms when there is a chance for agreement.

Thank you for your good wishes. My father has the lung cancer. Let this be another warning for smokers.

Teşekkür ederim / Thanks.

Of course, humans have good and bad qualities. In fact, that is the starting point of almost all the religions. For example, according to Zoroastrianism (a 3200 year old religion) which can be considered the basis of many later celestial religions: God has two spirits: Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu or in other words good spirit and bad spirit. These two constantly fight with each other. Humans are free to follow either spirit but it was said in the end Spenta Mainyu is destined to win.

In this ancient religion, there is a superior God Ahura Mazda who is the father of these two. From there you can guess it serves the basis for the holy trinity tenet of Christianity. Gathas (the holy book) is like a source of inspiration for later religions. In Islam there is a bridge called Sırat. All the mortals will eventually walk through that that bridge to reach heaven. If you are an evil person you are bound to fall down to hell. This entire story was borrowed from the Gathas. Both Christianity and the ancient Egyptian religion have similar mentions.

If you read, Zoroasters dialogues with Ahura Mazda you will realize why this ancient prophet needed a God. There have always been wicked people in the world. Nonetheless, evil and good have relative meanings. Take Al Qaeda, they base all their actions on God´s orders and they risk or sacrifice their lives to implement those so-called orders. If religion is a way to reach good how can they be bad? But in fact, from a Western perspective they are the devils.

Thank you.

Judaphobia, Turkophobia etc.; these words were not tokenized for nothing. There are indeed all sorts of phobias in the world. Many of them are deep-rooted. One such phobia is Turkophobia. From our perspective, it is so strong, anyone who lived in Turkey through the 70´s and 80´s would tell you, the Christian world hates Turkey and they have rarely sided with Turkey in any international conflict. This is very slowly getting weaker but it is far from over. A few days ago, an old Italian colleague of mine was with me in Istanbul. He confirms that by saying: there are still many Italians who think Turks, Iranians and Arabs are all Islamic fundamentalists and they must be avoided. He adds those who had a chance to visit Turkey have a totally different opinion.

There is no fast and easy cure for hatred. It is human nature. No matter how advanced we get, we still have the instincts of a beast. Though we act on a more complicated abstraction layer, we still display the same behaviour pattern of the stone age caveman.

My father has serious health problems and the doc says my blood pressure has gone up due to excessive stress. Thanks for asking where I have been. I hope I can spend more time here from now on.

Thank you for your suggestion si++. The problem is he would rank about the last on the list of journalists that I am pissed off with. In fact, I had not even heard of him before reading what looks like his primary school composition assignment.

Thank you for bringing this into our attention but I hate these formula articles where the writer takes the freedom of ignorantly raving about the results of a poll which he sees a chance to inject his irrelevant opinions.