I totally dig breathing.

It's this thing that I've been doing since, oh you know, I was born. It's this really super cool thing that involves sucking air in to my body and then letting it out when I am done using it. Apparently it keeps me alive and makes me have energy and gets my brain working and my blood pumping and all that good stuff. I dig that. I really do.

I get habits, too.

There was this one period in my life where I would come home and watch four hours of Saved By The Bell on that channel, TBS. You know, the channel that has that wacky show time thing like: 8:05am to 8:35am Saved By The Bell will play... they don't round it to normal hours of the clock.. they love that five minute deal. Anyway, I had the habit for a good semester or two of high school to come home and do my homework in front of four hours of that show reciting every line... even if I saw the episode the day before. It was a habit.

But it didn't kill others.

You know where I'm going with this. Yeah. If you don't know, you can't smoke in Chicago. Finally. Thank God. Now, I'm not going to get on my whole social high horse of why I think this is fantastic(because I don't smell like crap when I leave a bar because I don't have to hold my breath when I am dancing at Berlin because I don't have to worry about absorbing all the stuff other people enjoy absorbing because other people are absorbing it at choice). I'm not a judger. I'm just not.

But, I love it. And I don't just love it because I don't have to smell it. I love it because it's like we are finally on the right track. It's like we finally get it as people.

I was born when smoking was still as popular as 80's synthesized beats. I remember people smoking all over the place... including people in my family. And I used to think it was so fricken cool. Those awesome white sticks dangling out of mouths. You got to carry a lighter wherever you went. You got to blow out smoke from your nose like a dragon. There was nothing cooler than that. Being a dragon, that is.

But then we lost a family member to it. And then there was the realization that being a dragon wasn't as cool as staying alive. And it was when I saw that ad back in the mid 80's where they were all: "Would you give a cigarette to your unborn baby..." and a picture of a fetus totally lighting up where I got that sometimes we are all still idiots.

We still shoot at each other with guns when we disagree. We still eat ourselves in to death. We still sleep with people without using protection. We still keep on making the mistakes that we should totally be learning from.

So, this whole no smoking in public places in Illinois is making it easier to breathe... and the scent that we are breathing in is no longer tar, but maybe it's optimism. Maybe this is a new step for us as people or at least respect for ourselves. Maybe it's just good to know that we might not be able to end a pointless war or stop people from getting sick from having sex... but we can take it piece by piece... or puff by puff.

Or maybe it's just nice to know that we can take a deep breath without choking on our mistakes.