Would you start today?

Say someone offers you your very first cigarette tonight. Your age now, your life now, none of the history attached. It's free. Nobody's watching. Check what you feel, not what you're supposed to feel. For a lot of people standing where you are, it lands like a stranger offering you their cold fries. A flat, polite nothing.

That flat feeling is worth more than a pile of hard evenings. Wanting needs machinery. A belief the thing delivers. A memory of it working. Strip away the history and the cigarette has nothing left to work with. All it ever had was a groove it wore into you. You can't fake flat on purpose. That's why you can trust it.

Effort makes noise, so that's what you've been counting. Change makes none. Meanwhile the person doing the effort is becoming someone the effort doesn't fit. God does plenty of His building in rooms nobody's standing in. Identity changes in the basement while you're watching the front door.

Every so often, run the scene again. First one, no history, tonight. Notice the answer without arguing with it. A tug means the work's still underway. A flat nothing means a piece of it is done. Either way, thank God for whatever part is finished. You changed me while I wasn't looking. You don't argue with the person who'd say yes. You outgrow them.