With resentments towards none and all

Welcome my dear reader! You will find a random abundance of resentments here and I can promise you, as the weeks progress you will find this is the right place to satisfy your appetite for more and more.

First, lets clarify why "random" and "resentments" were choosen to stand as guardian angels at the beginning of this column. 

The definition of "random" is as follows: "not part of a pattern but governed by chance."  

There is a quote, originally from the Bible book of Proverbs, but later quoted by William Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice, which says, "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."  However, in the coming weeks and months, I am agreeing to open not only my mouth, but also my heart through these words.
 
What better means to make it possible than to depend on "chance." French novelist Anatole France wrote, "Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work." There is one more definition of GOD, I do believe in "Good Orderly Direction."

Shifting the focus to resentment, which is generally believed to mean, "in a bad sense, strong displeasure; anger; hostility provoked by a wrong or injury," I found it can have a positive meaning as well, indicating, "in a good sense, satisfaction; gratitude." 

Playing with permutations and combinations of dictionary definitions, it was found that resentments could stand for the feelings of bitterness, anger or indignation, harboured over varying periods of time, in addition to another set of feelings of gratitude. A bit of Googling showed that the former negative feelings stay longer in the human system than the latter meaningful or positive gratitude.

I was reminded of my childhood where I found that, similar to spectacular fireworks, good experiences hardly lasted any time in the cells of memory, while, like incense sticks, bad experiences take a long time to burn and the aroma lingers much longer after the event has passed into history.

Now I am stuck with Random Resentments until an act of Providence removes it or my editor gets sick of my blah-blah.

And that gives us our first resentment of Random Resentments. As it's said, charity begins at home, let's start the resentments list at home at New Europe.

My young, energetic new editor Alexander Koronakis has been wondering when I will start writing a column (Greeks have an obsession with columns since the days of yore) and after dodging the issue with all sorts of excuses, I finally relented, deciding that writing a column every week will provide some discipline in life. If you think writing a column at 3 am is discipline, then I must be on the right track!

The current resentment accounting can not be complete without its flip side, which goes to the outgoing editor Basil Coronakis, who, more than a decade after I joined New Europe, decided to move to greener (some may not agree and have a resentment on this statement) pastures of diplomacy as H.E. Basil Coronakis. I take this opportunity to congratulate H.E. in his new adventure and he is already missed by "Old Europe," as I classify myself along with his generation of journalists at "New Europe."

It is indeed satisfying to express resentments (with both good and bad meanings) and my mind is already getting crowded with umpteen number of resentments that are popping up. It's a normal state of mind for a Brussels based journalist when one has to wade through the labyrinth of the European institutions every day. More on that in the coming weeks.