I'm terrible

As a student I used to live in a building where a somewhat mentally disturbed woman, a neighbour from another floor, used to take nightly walks down the hallway and enter any of our rooms if the door was open, looking for wine and/or company. One girl responded to this by making the following remark in the big notebook which had its place in one of the shared bathrooms: "On the one hand I feel sorry for her. On the other hand I think she's a terrible nuisance. Paradox!!" End of comment. And I remember thinking: Well? You wish you didn't have to deal with this and now you've officially stated that you won't - ?

Pointing out the paradox as such, simply having mixed feelings about the situation, seemed to legitimize the girl's complete resignation.

I came upon the same type of reasoning in a column today, an afterthought on May 1 in one of the surviving free news papers 24 timer:

YES TO WELFARE - NO TO POVERTY was an official May 1 slogan this year, and the columnist, the film director Søren Fauli, disapproves of the slogan. He finds the notion of poverty in present day Denmark outdated, and so he suggests an alternative slogan which goes something like 'NO to (buying) more stuff' and 'YES to attentiveness'. Fair enough. And who is Søren Fauli to suggest this?

Well, Fauli comments on his own dubious ethos as an advocate of anti-materialism and anti-consumption as he informs us that he works in advertising and stimulates consumption for a living. And that his personal level of consumption is beyond limits. [Ergo: Paradox!! End of column.]

So what am I saying? That I very much like a personal column to be explorative and say something more than:

"I'm terrible - what a paradox".