Dear Kymmenen #2, You got mail!

Hi people,

For this week's answer, I have chosen this very kind email that Ben Karlson had the delicacy to send me from UK. Check it out, very fruity:

(not) Dear Kymmenen,

You think yourself so smart? Your not, go fuck yourself, you bloody emo

Crappily yours,
Ben

Dear Ben,

Believe it or not, I appreciate hate mail like yours. It reminds me what's good about being phlegmatic, and that's it, I can genuinely smile to mail like that one, and feel flattered for being picked up from all the morons, motherfuckers and assholes dwelling out there.

Thanks, Ben. It makes me feel loved.

But to answer to your question, yes, I think so. Although it's not something that I actively brag about, now that you ask, yes, I think myself smart.

Not that I regard smart people being in a way superior or of more value than others, in fact, I believe that the whole thing is highly over-rated. Even more, it has been always a matter of discomfort to me to suspect that perhaps, and very generally speaking, I'm just smarter than average.

I have most often felt some sort of anguish whenever I came to feel that people couldn't really understand the way I was feeling, or thinking, or, well, being.

Because, in the end, in my opinion, that being smart or IQ measuring or all that crap, just proves that there are a hell of a lot of different people out there, and that we actually feel, think and perceive the world and ourselves in different ways.

Now, about being a bloody emo, I think you are even more right than you think. Lately I have been suspecting that I'm too emo to dress or be like an emo, but that, in fact, I AM an emo.

Some funny anecdote that happened to me a couple of weeks ago:

Totally by random (meaning, stalking people on facebook), I came across a website called postcrossing. The idea behind is simple: you register, submit your postal address, and ask for a random address where you send a postcard to a complete stranger. Every time you send a postcard, your address is eligible for being given to someone else who, in turn, would send you a postcard from somewhere in the world.

I thought it to be a nice idea, so I joined in.

Some postcards after that, I felt completely disappointed with it. In most cases, the postcards people sent turned out to be little more than the usual spam you get in your mailbox from the supermarket. I had to control myself not to throw them directly into the trash bin.

Not that I expected literary master works or poetry on them (or maybe yes?), but I hoped at least to feel that the postcard was address to me, and not written and prepared already in advance by people interesting in collecting quantities of postcards, paying little or no attention to their quality, if you know what I mean by quality.

I went to the website once more to wander around and to reflect about my disappointment, when I came across some statistics about the users.

There was a big map showing users per country, and it looked like this:

Countries participating in Postcrossing
Countries not yet participating in Postcrossing

I swallowed hard and had my emo moment.

"There it is, Africa on flames and here we are sending little postcards to each other."

I found it so sad and depressing that I remained moody and silent for the rest of the week.

I still have a handful of nice postcards left waiting for a new owner, but I have been avoiding looking at them for quite a while now. Such an emo I am, Ben.

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Thanks for reading this week's answer!

And remember, every Sunday a new question will be answered, creating the opportunity for some discussion. Come on in and send yours to:

dearkymmenen (at) yahoo.com