I visited the post office yesterday. As I pulled open the heavy glass door to enter the building, I instinctively looked behind me.

There was a man walking along the pavement. He was not directly behind me. He was approximately twenty feet away. In the intricate rules of pedestrian social etiquette, he was firmly in the "Grey Zone" that is too far for me to naturally hold the door, but just close enough that slamming it in his face would seem like a deliberate insult.

In a moment of panic, I decided to be polite. I extended my arm, rested my hip against the heavy glass, and offered him a tight, reassuring smile.

Immediately, the man’s demeanour changed. A look of serious stress crossed his face. He realised that a stranger was holding a heavy object open for him, and that every second he took to reach the door was a second he was inconveniencing me. So, he did what society expected. He engaged in the "Door Jog".

You know the Door Jog. It's not a proper run; it's a frantic, stiff, shuffling half-sprint. His arms stayed glued to his sides. His backpack bounced awkwardly. He was panting slightly by the time he reached me, gasping a breathless "Thank you" as he hurried past. I smiled and said, "No problem."

It was a lie. It was a massive problem. In my attempt to be kind, I had ruined his afternoon.

Why do we subject each other to this misery? I thought I was performing a good deed, but the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham would strongly disagree with my methods.

Bentham was the founder of Utilitarianism, a moral philosophy based on the simple premise that the most ethical action is the one that produces the "greatest good for the greatest number." To this end, Bentham devised the "Felicific Calculus" (or Hedonistic Calculus), a literal mathematical algorithm for measuring pleasure and pain.

According to Bentham, before acting, one must weigh the intensity, duration, and certainty of the happiness the action will generate against the potential suffering it may cause.

Sorry, Bentham, I am bad at math.

Holding at the post office door, I carried out a poor utilitarian calculation. I assumed that the "pleasure" of avoiding the effort of opening a heavy door would outweigh the "pain" the man would experience as he approached it.

I was entirely mistaken. I caused a significant utilitarian loss. Holding the door didn't bring any joy but instead resulted in considerable, measurable pain. I felt the physical strain of holding open a heavy glass panel, along with the emotional discomfort of social awkwardness. The man endured the physical stress of unexpected cardiovascular effort, coupled with anxiety over feeling like a burden.

We found no happiness. We only increased our shared suffering. The Door Jog is a disastrous failure of utilitarian logic, a social custom that results in a net-negative effect on human happiness.

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If human beings are poor utilitarians, failing to maximise collective happiness, the cat is a pure, unadulterated Egoist. She does not care about the "greatest good for the greatest number." She cares solely about the greatest good for HERSELF.

Yesterday evening, she sat by the patio door and let out a single, commanding scream. She wanted to go into the garden. I stood up, walked over, and opened the glass door. I stood there, holding it, waiting for her to come out.

She did not step out. Instead, she took one step forward so that her body was perfectly aligned across the threshold, half inside, half outside. Then, she sat down. She gazed at the grass. She observed a bug. A cold breeze filled the living room.

"Come on," I said, shivering. She slowly turned her head and looked up at me. Her expression was utterly blank. "You opened the door," her eyes said. "That was your choice. I am assessing the atmosphere. Do not rush me."

I watched the man from the post office walk to the service counter, still trying to catch his breath. I realised that true modern kindness isn't about performing polite gestures; it's about precise mathematics. My inability to calculate distance had turned a courteous habit into an act of utilitarian violence.

Until I learn to accurately estimate the space between myself, a heavy glass door, and a pedestrian moving at three miles per hour, I have a new moral duty: I must stop trying to be helpful.

I have absolutely no business "assisting" strangers using only my limited primary school maths. Additionally, I am far-sighted. When you combine a biological inability to judge depth with a fundamental failure to understand basic geometry, holding a door open isn't a courtesy; it becomes a public safety hazard.

See you next time. Keep walking at your own pace,

Asena

RABBIT HOLE

Every week, I fall down a few rabbit holes. I gather here some insightful things (I don’t promise) I have read, watched, and discovered over the last seven days. If you’re looking for a bit of wonder, click the links below to explore more.

Emily M. Madden’s sketches of her cat, Mouton, resemble a 19th-century Instagram feed, demonstrating that even in 1856, humans were already powerless against the “main character” energy of a fluffy feline.

Over three years (ages 8 to 11), Emily, daughter of a British Museum scholar, crafted a handmade illustrated manuscript entirely dedicated to her cat. Not a storybook. Not a moral lesson. Just page after page of drawings with little handwritten captions like: here is my cat sleeping, here is my cat judging, here is my cat being deeply inconvenienced by existence.

While other Victorian children were busy having their spirits crushed by Latin verbs and strict moral lessons, Emily was out here creating a multi-volume devotional text to a tiny, judgmental god who seems to have just overheard the most scandalous gossip in the parlour and plans to hold it against you forever.

History made the wrong things important. This should’ve been the curriculum. 🐈📜

You can see the whole book here:

In this painting, Manet radiates the exact energy of a buffering, stuck in a state of existential exhaustion, unable to decide whether he hates the music or just the general concept of “life”. However, his colourful socks are sending a serious message here; they say, "My spirit may be broken, but my accessory game is still top-tier."

The real tea, though, is the literal "crop" on the right. In the ultimate 1860s version of a "delete this" move, Manet actually took a knife to this painting because he was so offended by how Degas depicted his wife Suzanne’s face. He performed a surgical extraction on it, removing half of Suzanne playing the piano.

When Degas saw his masterpiece had been tampered with using a kitchen knife, he was so petty that he reclaimed the painting and returned a still life by Manet that had been a gift, proving that art history’s greatest friendships were the 19th-century equivalent of an aggressive "unfollow" and a demand for his hoodie back.

I read this poem, and what I enjoyed about it was how it transforms a simple lesson in rolling dough into an emotional crisis. I liked how the grandma’s “lord, these children” feels authentic, because that line alone could earn an award for exhausted elders everywhere. I appreciated that nobody explicitly says what they mean, which makes the poem feel awkward in a very relatable way.

By Nikki Giovanni

her grandmother called her from the playground   

       “yes, ma’am”

       “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old   

woman proudly

but the little girl didn’t want

to learn how because she knew

even if she couldn’t say it that

that would mean when the old one died she would be less   

dependent on her spirit so

she said

       “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”

with her lips poked out

and the old woman wiped her hands on

her apron saying “lord

       these children”

and neither of them ever

said what they meant

and i guess nobody ever does

That’s it. You’ve reached the end. Thank you for reading. ❤️ Your reward this week is the Potoo bird, an avian creature from South America that possesses large, terrifying yellow eyes and constantly looks like it just remembered it left the stove on three days ago.

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