Meaning of life

Firstly, I wanted to write about Tim's 1st topic, but then I thought that the post which involves only one word - "No" - won't be that enough to be exciting to read, although, may be, it was easy to understand and to comment it.
So I've chosen Anna's topic, which seemed to be the most interesting. Sometimes we discuss such questions with my friends, although not very often - all of us already know the thoughts of the others towards the topic.
warning: all my thoughts which will be explained here cannot be interpreted as an agression towards religion, I just do state my opinion, and I have a right to do it, don't I?
I do not believe that human's life involves any general sense or meaning, as I do not believe at any gods. However, I understand that in part it is a consiquence of the education that I had, and I do not try to convince somebody. The sense of life can not exist if we take as an axiom the absence of a creator, and, in my opinion, it is impossible to call the biological aspiration for reproduction as a general purport of life for the whole humanity. Despite it, we can produce a general goal of life for ourselves. There is a strange lexical point here which was the reason of a long discussion with some of my acquaintances because of missunderstanding - I believe that we can call "meaning of life" only something general and common for all of us, and, in this sense, it does not exist. But if we take it as the most important goal of life (which, logically, can be changed), it does.
What about me, I do not have any serious goal now. I just keep enjoying the life in my own way (may be I am just an egoistic hedonist). In contrast to some other people's thoughts, I do not think that the common, general meaning of everything we do has to be a part and parcel of our life. You do not have to "get as much new experience as you are able to", "have a family and raise two kids", "just enjoy your life", "be pious and religious", etc. - you DO NOT HAVE to do something. It's all up to you, you do not owe something to any supernatural beings or common morality, as your life belongs to you.

3 blog topics for the next week

1. Last theatre performance you've seen. Describe it, tell your impressions and thoughts about it.
2. Your plans for the time after graduation in 2016: are you going to continue studying (where?) or to try to find a job (what job?)
3. Your impression about the whole Salinger's book. Did you like it? Why or why not? which other books/films seem to be similar to it?

To smoke or not to smoke, that is the question!

This time, I've decided to choose a topic which i rarely talked about, even with my friends. the case is that I haven't even tried to smoke in my whole life. However, a couple of my friends have been smoking (and trying to give it up).
Firstly, I'd like to say that I understand smoking bad influence on one's health. For me, it is absurd to smoke as this activity does not have benefits, only disadvantages. However, I also do not understand many other activities, like trying to change political situation in Russia, but I am aware of the fact that for other sort of people it can be an important part of their life as they can have other attitude towards this things, such a case is the one of smoking.
My idea is that everyone must have a free choice, although everyone must also know what are the consequences of smoking. Many young (and, unfortunatly, not only young) listen all the warnings, but do not really understand them, but I believe that it is not the problem of the government or the problem of the society - one's stupidness is his or her own problem. Furthermore, more than a half of smokers are really aware of the consequences. There's nothing more to say about them as we have to respect other people's choice. Smoking is not worse than drinking alcohol, and much better than taking drugs (another discussible topic).
An other problem is passive smoking. When i come to a restaurant, or even go on the street, I usually can't evoid passive smoking. This problem is the one that should be solved, as people suffer because of other ones' choice. Passive smoking may be very dangerous for children, but it could injure adults' health just the same. This situation is changing now, fortunatly.
All in all, it is your own decision - to smoke or not to smoke. I prefer not to do it.

Poetry vs. Prose

Literature is usually devided in two different types: poetry and prose. Prose seems to be more popular as it is much easier to understand what is the author writing about, while poetry is sometimes considered to be an "elite art", that is, an art which is done mostly for people which are more clever than most of the others. I believe that poetry is less popular because of an other reason: you need to have quite a huge experience of reading poetry texts if you want to really understand them, while the prose does not require special training.
What about me, I still can't enjoy reading most poetry works and I prefer spend my free time reading novels and short stories. However, I understand that some poems are brilliant (in this area, Russia is an outstanding country: we have a lot of great poets, and I like them much more than their colleagues from other countries)) and, from time to time, I read poetry, although not very often.
All in all, prose is easier and more accesible, that's why I prefer novels.