Of Moods Various…!

Mood changes or mood swings affect every living being of the world including animals and in some cases lifeless objects too. The latter assertion may surprise many, but there are numerous instances in this regard that will be taken up as we rather moodily move along. At the very start of this month, that is August 2021, I lost my mood to write anything and everything—that is to say my mood changed—and I don’t know why. There are, as everyone knows, numerous possible reasons for this: one may feel lazy and pass time in reading rather than writing that demands more application and concentration; one may feel depressed for no reason; one may be disturbed due to happenings that relate to other people or external factors; one may be ill or under particular medicines with side effects and in the case of illness there is a vicious circle of physical illness leading to mental illness and then both affecting one another as it goes on; hormone imbalances which are a bit serious causing mood swings and other problems. Anger is always a common factor for mood-change for all—humans or animals.

 

I didn’t even have the mood to ponder upon what exactly caused my mood-change, and I thought that to understand this complex syndrome of human moods I’d need to embark upon a Freudian analysis for which I had less knowledge and lesser expertise. So I gave up and stopped writing though there were too many things happening in my country and in the world, and of course my original pieces. Thus far we have given some indication of how complex the process of mood-change is and some of the countless reasons for the same, in the case of only humans or basically their minds. Now we can talk a bit about the animals that don’t possess brains to change their moods as often as humans, but have accurate instincts that mostly drive them differentially under different circumstances.

 

As far as wild animals in actual wilderness is concerned I have no direct experience, and only know that the basic instinct of hunger drives them all—the carnivorous goes on hunting to appease their hunger and the herbivorous goes on searching for green and greener pastures. When the tigers or the lions are fully satiated with enough food in the bellies they don’t bother if herds of deer and wild buffalos graze near them, and the latter also understand that at the moment they’d not be chased and hunted. Drinking water is as crucially important for animals as for humans, and therefore, when all types of animals drink from the stream nobody attacks anybody in an instinctive bond of mutuality. All these examples are related to various moods only, but driven by instinct in their cases.

 

Of the domesticated animals dogs are the most astonishing and wonderful variety—they show their moods freely on all occasions. When a tragedy strikes the family that has a pet dog, the latter feels it too and refuses to eat sitting quietly and sadly outside. There are true cases when a dog actually dies out of fasting after the death of his/her beloved master. Such mood changes occur to the cats also, but to a lesser extent. We find cases when the head cat leaves the house after tragedy or death strikes the family. Domesticated elephants also display various moods from terrible anger to supreme peace, but their mood changes are basically related to human force.

 

I mentioned about even lifeless objects having moodiness. Well, when you buy an electronic device you naturally ask the seller how it is going to perform and if it’ll go out of order frequently. I’ve myself heard several sellers saying, “The performance record is very good, but you can never be sure about problems. You know, electronic systems also have their moods, they can be real moody sometimes and you may have to call the service centre!”

 

After more than a fortnight during which I did my necessary activities on my smartphone I needed the laptop for some serious transactions. And my Goodness! It started, but immediately displayed an unstoppable trembling of the screen including the icons on the desktop. When somehow I managed to open the browser and the site I needed and attempted to type something the curser flew to the right or down continuously, not allowing me to type more than a single world in one go. The next day it totally denied me the pleasure of typing –the flickering stopped no doubt, but the keyboard refused obstinately to oblige me.

 

I understood, as it were. My laptop has been so used to my regular writing that when my mood made me inactive it was shaking with rage avenging. I called the engineer who diagnosed the problem without, of course, saying anything about mood-change. Although he promised to bring it back ready in two days it so happened that five days passed during which I started feeling the urge to start writing—the mood-change again—and this time I had to suffer because of the delay in repairing. The day the engineer finally handed over it to me ready and in good mood, I started writing immediately about something that has been in my mind for a long time in this month of inaction. However, the main reason was just to please the laptop, to keep it in a better mood hereafter!