Moods

Sorrow, by Vincent Van Gogh

My dictionary defines a mood as "a state of mind or feeling". Though succinct, I thought this was a poor definition. I agree that a mood is a state, but to me it also incorporates the physiological, and is therefore also a physical state. In this little rant, I'm using the word quite loosely.

Althuogh I've never experienced a single thing from anyone's persepective other than my own, it seems we all go through mood changes, albeit to different degrees. The question I'm concerned with, though, is what to do when you're in a shitty mood? This might be depression, anger, hate, jealousy, stress, or countless others. (Or a combination of a number of these - I don't think moods are so easy to categorise that they can be classed in to fixed categories.) If you're jealous of somebody, let's say you envy a colleague's success, what do you do? I think these are your options, in any case:

1. Act on the jealousy. This could be anything from trying to get them sacked or just being a dick.
2. Act in a non-jealous way, despite being jealous on the inside.
3. Try to think in a non-jealous way, which will of course lead to non-jealous actions (and a non-jealous state).

Each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. Option 1 is what I consider the arsehole option, the immoral one, but a surprisingly (and disturbingly) large number of people resort to it. Option 2, to me, is acceptable morally considering that you do not hurt the object of jealousy. It's dubious, though - some systems of morality would consider it immoral, eg, I think I remember learning in Sunday School that if you have had adulterous thoughts, then you have committed adultery. Option 3, I think, is ideal, because it deals with the root of the problem - the jealousy itself. Nobody will act in jealous ways if they are not jealous to begin with.

Still, I'm not sure if knowing what option to take leaves us any better off, because it still leaves the gaping question - how do we change our mood? Let's look at the example of depression - it's all well and good to understand that we do not want to be depressed, it's damn obvious, but much harder is to get out of that rut. In fact, I believe it might be impossible. What do you do when you're depressed?? Looking at the options above and applying them to depression, I think i consistently use all three options (never at the same time though) - I act in depressed ways, for example, I might sleep in despite having a morning class; I act (or at least try to act) in non-depressed ways, so I force my self to wake up and go to my morning class even though I feel like a sack of shit; I try to think myself out of the depression: "I really shouldn't be depressed, because things aren't all that bad", etc. The problem is, though, none really works. Each one has major flaws.

I've had enough of writing for now, but I think I've opened up the topic at least, and I'll no doubt come back to explore it, because I think it's something that has profound practical applications. For now, this is my conclusion: if you're in a negative state of mind, then you're fucked no matter what you do, so you might as well just cop it on the chin. The best thing you can do is just engage your mind in something else until the feeling passes, because all things do pass in time (I'm aware of some pretty profound flaws in this way of thinking, and the fact that it might even be quite dangerous if misinterpreted. But it's all I've got for now).