The Doldrums

What rules over us?
Why do we prefer to remain silent on some occasions?
don’t we carry the same temperament everyday?
What decides how we are going to behave each moment of the day?

With such ambiguity we lead our life! Once when I was in class 11, one Mr. Bernard who was a lecturer in one of the colleges in our town, gave us a brief speech on “Self Analysis”. It was a very simple and thought provoking lecture. He began with a formal introduction and soon touched the topic. He asked every one of us to remove a piece of paper. He asked us how long will it take for us to write 6 words. With great pride, all of us announced that it will take not more than 15 seconds. He was happy with the answer and asked us to write just six words – 3 good quality of ours and 3 bad qualities. We all were puzzled. For the first few seconds we all giggled over this surprising assignment. The next few seconds we thought over our good qualities. Some of them could manage to write at least one. But most of them began with bad qualities since it came out spontaneously. In fact, it exceeded the limit of 3 words.

Soon, the time limit allotted was over. He asked us if we all finished. We asked for extra time and he gave. But still I could not finish and I knew that some of my friends could not finish it too.

He asked us to retain the paper with us. He then began, “How many of you could finish them?”A hand full of students raised their hands up. He asked if any of them can get up and read them out aloud. One boy who was much younger to us got up instantly and proudly declared that his good qualities were – studying well, helping his brother in studies and running errands for his Mom and Dad. Unknowingly, we all began to clap hands. We were not able to identify our good quality which a young boy was easily able to. We were supposed to be the eldest group of students available for the lecture that day. Some of them had penned down their good qualities but were shy to write it down thinking of what others would think of them.

Mr. Bernard appreciated the boy and did not let him say the 3 bad qualities that he had written down. Well, that was not his concern. He did not come to identify the faults of each of us and suggest remedies to get rid of them. He had come there only to identify ourselves first before we begin to look at the world around.

He was so happy that at least one boy could boldly get up and speak out all about his characteristics. He turned towards us and asked us the reason why we were not able to write. We gave him no answer. He asked us if we have not understood ourselves. Well, that was true. We had not spent time to find out our best feature. We were ashamed of ourselves.

The speech then went on very well with 100% concentration contributed by all. At the end of the speech, I discussed with my friends on the lectured topic and we all made up our mind to try and discover our strength and weakness. In fact we did. Further to that, we took up one more assignment of getting rid of the negative features that we had.

My negative feature on top was mood fluctuation. I was never constant. I am still inconsistent. I am not the same always. Later on I realized that this is not my problem alone. Most of us have this problem. We do not know what decides our mood. So many pleasant happenings would have taken place. Yet we would remain dull and gloomy. We would have also remained cheerful when there has been a crisis at home. What is the factor that decides our mood and temper? I have not been able to find it out till date. I had worked out on it on several occasions. I am pretty sure that before even I could go through an unpleasant episode, my mood remains dull. I have remained silent right from the moment I have got out from bed. Can I blame the dreams for it? I remain silent for some reason beyond my knowledge. I wish to be happy and interact with people but I would not be able to make a bold attempt. This saddens me day and night and all year through. Does any one of you have a solution to this? Or do you also belong to this category? What is it that is ruling over me and thousands of other people like me?