Mood Orders

So much has been written about mood disorders. I am yet to make my foray into the modern field called Positive Psychology, stuck as I am still labouring somewhere in the 3rd century BC.

But recently I have been trying to deliberately swing my mind, partly by experimenting with substances (all perfectly legal, thank you). Here’s presenting to you a brand new and groundbreaking idea: that if mood swings can go south, they can also go right.

Except of course, there is nothing new under the sun. If old Diogenes Laërtius is to be believed, Aristippus is the hero of this delicate approach to living. (See the link, I’m too lazy/originality-conscious to hand you a summary.)

Like many other secrets of life, this approach can be packaged as a traffic metaphor. When it’s a red light that life has for you, you better just stop. If you “just cannot help” not stopping, start to reflect upon how Death is always over your shoulder and how your precious consciousness hangs in a precarious balance over the tip of a pyramid. If it’s a green light, and you’re begging the powers that be to extend the expiry of that offer (which, let’s face it, is an unknown unknown to you), paint a picture of how beyond the Great First Step lies the cure to every ailment or at least that hay can only be made in the sunshine. That’s about it — but let not the simplicity of my Context Operated Mood Alteration (COMA™) system of therapeutic intervention fool you. Then again, I don’t want to ruin the fun of deriving life-changing corollaries for you either.

Positive thinking! Self-mastery! Conscious decision-making! Did my formula sound like self-help drivel? Were you looking for the awesomest zero-sum success factors trinity to memorise and apply irrelevantly/irreverently? Scrap that — here’s the ultimate secret to writing a self-help book yourself. Pick up any life form, observe its adaptations, infer patterns thereof and whip up a framework et voilà. Real self-help lies in transcending self-help.

If you’d like statistical verification with that, it’s gonna be an extra $8 per ounce.