I have just climbed into bed with a haunting sense of feeling useless. This feeling stems from having passively, helplessly, watched the news, watched the agonies of people’s lives in Libya and Japan, and closer to home too. And worse still, I found my mind drifting as to whether I should try a more orangey shade of red lipstick (I caught some of the BBC’s Silk beforehand and was clearly quite taken by the protagonist’s make up). It’s left me feeling wretched and guilty-how can I pretend to myself that I’m a concerned citizen who feels for the plight of others when my mind drifts so easily from the monumental to such selfish trivialities? I am feeling suffocated by my own human frailty and I don’t know what to do about it.
