The Self I Cannot Fathom

On television there are people who, with an air of expertise, hold forth on other people’s lives—this way and that. Talking is easy, but taking responsibility for what one says is quite difficult, something one can hardly do unless one is remarkably thick-skinned or excessively self-conscious—and though it is none of my business, it nags at me.

Why do they hold forth on TV? Because there are people watching, of course. That so many people harbor a rubbernecker’s interest in how others live can only be called having too much time on one’s hands. Or rather, it is precisely because of that that programs like this hold together.

To me it seems a program of no consequence; if anything, I am fully occupied day by day just pursuing my own way of living (and yet—what on earth am I, having watched this program to the very end…?).