My Learning Experience

Life is nothing if not a collection of experiences and a struggle of perception and cognition in order to understand different dimensions of those experiences. Each experience forming a pattern and prediction in preparation for the next one to come. The reaction of every individual in the face of any new experience determines the worth of the experience and the direction of the future. Among each of those didactic experiences that result in learned behavioral changes , some hold egregious worth and influence on perception and memory. One such experience lead me to quit smoking of the rest of my living days.
It was as average of a summer day as could be the very definition of stagnation when my best friend was diagnosed with stage four, lung cancer. The boy who never smoked a single cigarette in his life was going to lose that life as a price for having a smoker for a father. A choice that was never his to make but simple misfortune of a being born to a father who failed to process the dangers of second hand smoke. A drastic mistake of an ignorant but otherwise loving and devoted father, that lead to an unnerving end of his only son’s life at the mere coupled decade of it’s beginning. Through the devastation at the loss of my best friend’s presence in my life, I could see the guilt eating away at his father’s conscience, threatening to and eventually succeeding in claiming another life for all it’s worth. My best friend’s father embraced death shortly after death claimed his son’s life.
The experience on it’s whole lead me to associate every single cigarette with death and trauma, erasing every possibility of me ever smoking another cigarette for rest of my days. Every experience is a learning opportunity, some lessons are impossible to ignore.