I once spent a night in the home of an elderly very poor couple on Tenerife, because they offered some sort of service where the husband would fetch people from

I once spent a night in the home of an elderly very poor couple on Tenerife, because they offered some sort of service where the husband would fetch people from the ferry, and bring them to the airport the next day. They were so kind. He was near mentally challenged, a super sweet guy working as a garbage man there, so they could just barely afford it. They lived there because she had horrible arthritis and the climate there was the only thing that had ever helped. They had basically no friends there, lived in a poor village in some outskirts, the broken down look over your shoulder kind. And I still remember how she offered, just to be hospitable, some watered down fruit juice with like just a whiff of alcohol, and how she pointed to her super cheap cigarettes and said with a voice that was so full of cynicism and despair at the same time, that this was her only pleasure. I still remember that voice, the look her face had at that second, some kind of snarl -- not against me, they were so kind to me.. but against her fate I guess, and/or herself. It's impossible for me to describe, but indelible. Like all that misery, that is mostly pent up and that will follow her into the grave, escaping a bit in a short hiss. There is a German saying, to make a good face in a bad situation, and for just a split second, her face stopped doing that altogether, and I will never forget. God forbid that I do. None of what I'm writing makes sense to anyone I'm sure, but I so wish I could describe the pang I felt then -- and the pang I felt just now, reading the suggestion that, basically, "they" are beyond help anyway, so let's make advertisements shaming people for smoking, so that those who still have something to lose might fear to be associated with those who don't. Would you also say this in the presence of "the" poor? If I could make one invention, it would be something that swaps the brains of humans around every 5 years, completely randomly. People would sober up rather quickly I'm sure.