Thank you for smoking (and not expecting a scolding).

I have a friend who picked up smoking in college and now is unable to quit. Two weekends ago, when he lit up, he asked if I didn't mind and if I'd like one also, and when I gracefully declined said, "Oh, come on! You know you want one." And I said, Well, no, thanks, but no, not right now. Later in the evening, the good-natured nudge turned into a kind of begging, "Oh, come on. Don't make me smoke out here alone." At the end of the night, as I came back from the restroom and he was on his sixth cigarette in the hall outside our group's KTV bao xiang, he offered and I declined again, and he said finally, "If you don't like it, why don't you tell me to stop?"

I could barely help rolling my eyes. He has plenty of friends, mostly girls, who repeatedly implore him to stop: "Mike, don't smoke!" They say it so often that it's now a running gag and he always makes a point of lighting up with a smile after they say it. I told him, "It's your choice to smoke. I'm not judging you for it."

And he said, "But smoking is one of those things, you want people to tell you to stop because then you know that they care about you."

At the time, I shot right back, almost annoyed, but laughed to take the edge off, "I can care about you and not tell you what to do. This is a life choice you're making, and you know what it does to you. I could tell you not to do a million things that supposedly kill you, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not I care about you."

I still believe this, but I wonder if it's indicative of some kind of callousness on my part. Sometimes, my mother tells me that I ought to tell this friend or that friend that they're great but oh, they should get braces, or lose weight, or something or another that she thinks they could work on. Then she says, "Oh, I guess you can't say that; American friends don't do that, do they? Americans are only allowed to worry about themselves. They can't say what they mean; it's not polite, is it, to tell your friends those things? Even if it's in their best interest! But really, he should get braces...he's such a nice boy. Tell him I said so." I never really say anything in reply, usually, when she accuses me of being an American without the heart to tell it like it is or help my friends improve; but I think the point is less that I am keeping judgments to myself and more that I just don't make those judgments. I'd like to think that I am the type to help friends when I can, but is it really an unfeeling "American" philosophy to "respect" others' judgment at the expense of, maybe, actively helping them improve? Or is it that I just don't think most of those things are problems people should rectify--crooked teeth, being overweight, smoking, and whatever else? I've never thought it had anything to do with culture, but that's mostly because I have a hard time teasing out my Asian cultural influences from my American ones and like to think of all of my tendencies as my own special tendencies. I've come to realize that that can be a bit naive.

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As an aside, I almost typed, "It made me wonder..." and that reminds me that there is a TV show in Taiwan called "I love beauty" (我愛美麗) whose opening is an unabashed copy of the Sex and the City opening credits, complete with scenes of Taipei, a bus, a big puddle, and a tutu included.